Heart on Fire Print

Ruby Vartan allows viewers a peek into her inner world through painting. The merging of figuration and abstraction is where their gaze is then focused. She explores emotion and sensuality in all their physical and emotional glory. The hallmark of her work is its revelry in abstracting the female form. These are simultaneous self-portraits and cross-cultural signifiers of feminine essentialism. While wounds and trauma are represented in the abstract, her layered compositions render them as part of a greater journey toward healing and redemption. The ultimate aim of the work is to investigate the notion of a vital life force in a constant state of renewal. Her studio process is inclusive and experimental. She will tear the canvas one day, sew it the next, mix turmeric into pigment, whatever it takes to find that precise resonance of closeness and discretion that her work embodies. This physicality and rough handling contrasts the preciousness of the intimacies she reveals. She is not bound to one pictorial method; the fierce liquid power of her experience thrives in an endless refreshing of mediums. Telling her own story through her art, she viscerally draws viewers into a world filled with volatile honesty and fragile self-expression.