Today we’d like to introduce you to Ruby Vartan.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I remember being very young maybe seven years of age, standing in silence alone in my birthplace, Lebanon, being certain of the thought that a bittersweet sadness would always carry me through my dreams. I remember spending my summers watching the sunset of the Mediterranean sea in front of me and playing with color fervently. I had to go to every art academy while growing up & finally specialized in painting in Fine Arts at Academie Libanaise des Beaux Arts After a long turmoil of life, living through different civil wars, being an immigrant, a single mom, a free soul I can say, that my early perception of my identity was true. It was before everything happened that constructed me to who I really am now, I felt the power & desire of expressing myself in art, I saw things around me & questioned its true existence. I already adapted the urge to unfold things to reach the core, which grew to be unveiling layers of myself & gradually embark to my true inner self that I express in my art.
I paint the process of change, inspired by my own personal life experiences. I paint my unspoken words, my heart full of sentiments. My colors in my paintings symbolize feelings and emotions that cannot be expressed in words, but solely in color. While the traces of pure white untouched canvas represent my hopes, dreams, and desires. The process of painting nourishes my soul while I reveal my cocooned memories of life through it. My art is complete once I feel I have recalled certain stories that have either scarred me or made me grow stronger and deeper, capturing and preserving them forever in my images.
Please tell us about your art.
I started with the butterfly (the evolving freedom symbol) series that reflects liberation and flight of the soul, with emerging wings to the world, when I felt changing and growing as an artist and being free in my expression. I now tell my stories in my art with the concept of “the artist being present in the art itself,” which reveals pure authenticity of the self. I do that by lying on the floor on the canvas roll or the paper, and I trace my body parts and myself with charcoal. I find charcoal representing rawness and the organic state of a substance, relating to my volatile and honest essence. Charcoal also resembles my soul with its final product being undergone the burning process of wood. Not that I have burned, but I have lived through struggle, fear from war, loss, severe pain from a complicated pregnancy, betrayed, survived alone and still continue to progress in my journey. I then use color, to gush it all out. I live and love through color. Color is what beautifies my life and expresses my internal state. You will see some drips, drips of paint and the fluidity of water, resembling the ongoing flourishment of life and its renewal, refreshment of my soul. Drips tell you about my pains that I change them into forces of growth and strength. I have been slicing parts of the canvas and revealing gold texture behind the work. The cutting and distracting process I feel takes me to the process of finding new perimeters of the human. Gluing or sewing pieces together, makes me face my fears and perceive the limitless possibilities I can yet fulfill. My mind is open to achieve unbound new ways of self-expression and find new languages of communication.
Given everything that is going on in the world today, do you think the role of artists has changed? How do local, national or international events and issues affect your art?
I believe that the artist has a role in the society that he/she lives in, and that the artist doesn’t create art just to please his/her thoughts. A message is conveyed with the work, relating to the viewer or not. Being a woman of survival, I support and create having the feminine strength in the world. Women’s equality of power in our community is shown through art. I believe women are creatives of life, having the ability to bear new generations, by our resilience to physical pain, by our nurturing and flourishing nature. Women have shown long-lasting success of the system. The ability to govern a caring, healthy environment at home and become efficient leaders among the society defines a woman, a queen, and a warrior, leading & winning, fighting for it & achieving. Inspiring and uplifting souls. All of the above are expressed visually and in abstract form in the arts.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
Through social media (instagram and FB) of course the fastest route taken nowadays. Through my website contact ad saatchi.com profile: Ruby Vartan
Contact Info:
- Website: rubyvartan.com
- Phone: (818) 679 9459
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rubyvartan/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RubyVartan/?modal=composer
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/RubyVartan
- Other: https://www.saatchiart.com/www.rubyvartan.wordpress.com
Image Credit:
Ani Nazaryan aka ZiZiLens
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