Ruza Vatres
Ruža Vatres is a Kitchener-Ontario resident born in 1999. Coming from an artistic family, she has spent much of her life painting and drawing. She often develops inspiration from her Balkan cultural background as well as personal family history, though some of her current artistic explorations are also leading toward synthesizing literary and visual art. Her “In the Garden” series explores specific floral motifs as metaphors for memory and change, and weaves them together with family archival images. Visual artists like Olja Ivanjicki, Petar Lubarda, and Canada’s Sadko Hadžihasanović serve as reoccurring inspirations for the aesthetic aspects of her compositions.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
My work is created as a cathartic expression of my own power and autonomy within the memories of a domestic situation that was often under some siege of oppression and trauma. My scene paintings of family memories combine floral motifs, vintage bedsheets, and uncanny collage-style compositions to explore the way memory lingers or is overwritten.
My printmaking work follows a more linear narrative structure focusing on the same themes, veering on expressionism and cultural symbolism to convey the experiences of displacement.
Ruža Vatres is a Kitchener-Ontario resident born in 1999. Coming from an artistic family, she has spent much of her life painting and drawing. She often develops inspiration from her Balkan cultural background as well as personal family history, though some of her current artistic explorations are also leading toward synthesizing literary and visual art. Her “In the Garden” series explores specific floral motifs as metaphors for memory and change, and weaves them together with family archival images. Visual artists like Olja Ivanjicki, Petar Lubarda, and Canada’s Sadko Hadžihasanović serve as reoccurring inspirations for the aesthetic aspects of her compositions.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
My work is created as a cathartic expression of my own power and autonomy within the memories of a domestic situation that was often under some siege of oppression and trauma. My scene paintings of family memories combine floral motifs, vintage bedsheets, and uncanny collage-style compositions to explore the way memory lingers or is overwritten.
My printmaking work follows a more linear narrative structure focusing on the same themes, veering on expressionism and cultural symbolism to convey the experiences of displacement.
$2,000.00
Acrylic, oil, and graphite on stretched fabric (set of 2).
40x40"
Part of a mini-series of sets mimicking patterned vintage wallpaper with an art piece hung upon it. This diptych is part of a greater collection called "The Rose Garden" which uses floral symbolism to indicate the passage of time and the evolution of memory. The image on the left depicts a recreation of a painting I did as a child, and the image on the right depicts a recreation of a portrait my mother drew of me when I was a child.
$5,500.00
Oil, acrylic, and cold wax on canvas.
40x40"
This work, from the "Rose Garden" series, was created as a cathartic expression of my own power and autonomy within the memories of a domestic situation that was often under some siege of oppression and trauma. The composition of the main image—the mother and daughter in the act of creation—is confrontational and powerful, as the portrait of my child-self stares out at the observer and the portrait of my mother is absorbed in the creative work in front of her. The sliver of pattern occupying the bottom of the piece is a childish protest scribbled on the walls of a townhouse long left behind.