11/02 En Gallery Exhibition
11/02/2018 05:00 PM - 07:30 PM PT
Description
Higher Purpose by Vera Arutyunyan, 2009, oil on canvas, 48'x 36"; courtesy of the artist
En Gallery Presents
The Exuberant Abstractions of Vera Arutyunyan
Open to the public Friday, October 5
10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m
On view through Sunday, December 9
Free with garden admission
The Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden ends its 2018 exhibition schedule in En Gallery with a burst of color in a selection of dynamic oil paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Vera Arutyunyan.
For much of her 25-year artistic career, Vera Arutyunyan has created bold abstract oil paintings that have been expressions of her complex emotions as an immigrant building a new life in the United States. Born in Yerevan, Armenia, she emigrated to the U. S. in 1991. Initially she spoke no English, missed her family and was baffled by this country’s various systems, so she turned to painting to express her frustrations and innermost emotions.
At first she painted with a brush, but after several years, she put down her brush and used just her fingers. “I wanted to touch and feel the color directly,” she explains. “It’s much easier to express my feelings with my hands.”
For the last 15 years, she has been diving into the paint with her hands, letting nothing come between her pigment and her self. Her colors enabled her to communicate her despair, joy, love and wonder in ways that words failed her. Now regularly exhibited locally and internationally, Arutyunyan’s vibrantly expressive work increasingly exudes the joy and confidence that comes with knowing she is home.
The exhibition, The Exuberant Abstractions of Vera Arutyunyan, will be on view through Sunday, December 9, 2018.