Varoujan's Art

Read Article / View Collection / Exhibition Photo Album

Varoujan is one of those rare artists who combine natural innate talent and superb creativity, with academic classic training. The combination is a recipe for greatness and the result is a series of beautiful paintings. Varoujan has a unique signature style. He's a master craftsman who eloquently defines spaces, situations and relations with the strokes of his brush. His paintings portray a physical connection between two people, as a metaphor for their spiritual communion. Varoujan's passion for life and romance, as well as his love for women as symbols of life, are depicted in these sophisticated paintings.

As the light of a candle held in one's hand will create the illusion that the hand is transparent, quasi immaterial, so are some of the women in his paintings. Their bodies seem to be of wax melting under a glow and revealing the transparency of their intentions and the mystery of their wants. The softness of the light reveals the transparency of the soul. Day and night, black and white, light and shadows reveal the subjects in their drama. Fingers barely touching reveal the sensuality of the subjects. Touching is a mystery that reveals itself in the story being told, and the viewer is invited to complete the story.

He starts with a single line that travels through the canvas to create spaces and forms. He attains a perfect balance between light and dark, portraying the richness of contrasts that exist within. Like the Romantics, Varoujan emphasizes emotions by painting in a bold, dramatic manner.

He uses the purity of form to mystify the object, and vibrant compositions and luminous colors to create its emotional tone. The image is a snap shot of a moment experienced at some level by the artist. The composition remains in the realm of the physical world, and it projects the artist's intellectual relation to the subject. Varoujan's Romantic Expressionism is built on the concept of temptation.

The daily struggle between his wants and his needs is the dynamic portrayed in his compositions. In some paintings the color is vivid and cheerful, such as in the Temptation of the Bride, while others are melancholic, and melodramatic such as Pomegranate Eaters. In the painting Hugs and Kisses, her red dress and shoes are suggestive of desire contrasting with the wax-like quality of her body, but the couple's sensuality is portrayed in the delicate touch of their hands. This gentleness suspends the movement and the high energy in the composition. He sits her on his lap and she floats reaching for his kiss. His vulnerability and her strength complete each other. In Moonlight Embrace, the soft earthly tones take the viewer into the intricacies of tone, as through the multiple facets of a diamond. This painting captures the most seductive of moments, when the lovers shed the toils of daily life off their shoulders for this embrace under the moonlit sky, the celebration of their communion. In Temptation Under the Lemon Tree he invites her to taste the fruit of desire, simultaneously bitter and sweet as life itself. It is an image of innocense and youth, their lives are still undeveloped like a script not yet written. This painting captures a moment when all that is certain is the timeless ritual of life.