My name is Ilias Dimitriadis and I was born in 1954 in Thessaloniki, Greece, where I also currently live. I am a father of three sons and a recent retiree from the National Bank of Greece.My first contact with art, and specifically painting, occurred in 1989 as an escape from my daily work in the bank. At the same time, I also started working with stained glass and woodcarving, producing pieces of art only for my personal use, without participating in art exhibitions. I am self-taught when it comes to painting and my pieces, which I have exhibited in several group exhibitions, were made with the use of tempera. I am also self-taught in pyrography, which I started doing in 1995. I began producing pyrography paintings without any professional knowledge or contact with artworks of equivalent artists. I have exclusively been doing pyrography for the last two years. I consider it to be an exceptional technique and I stay updated through publications, internet posts etc. Classic pyrography does not contain color; the painting is depicted only through burning the wood. However, I myself, influenced by the art of painting that I once practiced, add a layer of color in the end using colored pencils, without covering the lines made when burning the wood. This way, I am able to produce an aesthetically more vivid result.