Artist Statement

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I am a multi-media artist from New Orleans, working primarily in oil painting, film photography, and glass-blowing. As a surrealist painter, I draw inspiration from my heritage as an Armenian-American and from the two cities that have shaped me most:; New Orleans, Santa Fe—both are places that border life and death, and where people celebrate them equally. I try to listen to the stories these places have to tell and transfer the wisdom to the canvas. If I can tell a story and have a conversation with my viewer with a painting, a language without words, then I am doing something right. 

With grisaille oil painting techniques., I paint detailed works addressing the theme of the human experience, something also wise and whimsical.

 

Through my painting, I explore figurative and suggestive storytelling and attempt to reveal the surrealism in everyday objects and scenes. The unconscious plane or “dreamworld” is a place where ideas and conversations can be had between artist and viewer from nearly any walk of life. I hope to create a bridge between the dreamworld and our own, and in the words of Cesar A. Cruz, “comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”