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  • To Armenia from Australia via Edmonton: Isolation Prompts Painter to

    To Armenia from Australia via Edmonton: Isolation prompts painter
    Lara Chauvin to explore her ancestral roots

    Edmonton Journal (Alberta) Canada
    July 16, 2006 Sunday
    Final Edition

    by Gilbert A. Bouchard, Special to The Journal

    EDMONTON - Australian-born painter Lara Chauvin had to move to Edmonton
    to artistically get back in touch with her Armenian cultural roots.

    "When I lived in Sydney, I was part of this large Armenian community
    and was surrounded by the language and the culture, which I took for
    granted," says the 29-year-old artist. "In fact, in my teen years I
    went through a phase where I rebelled and rejected my ancestral roots."

    That all changed in the spring of 2003. Having met and married a
    Canadian of non-Armenian origins while still in Australia, the newly
    minted couple moved to Edmonton for his work.

    Once in Alberta's capital, Chauvin found herself in a city that
    had virtually no Armenian community compared to the expat Armenian
    presence in Australia.

    "There were 40,000 Armenians in Sydney, but maybe only 200 or so
    here. All of a sudden I found myself in a city where I was getting
    together with other people of Armenian descent only very rarely and
    felt even more displaced.

    "I started thinking more deeply about what my Armenian roots meant
    and started painting images of Armenian women from various cultural
    settings around the world," she says. "You might say that I'm painting
    the push-pull of an identity crisis."

    Chauvin has a debut showing of paintings at the Lando Gallery, 11130
    105th Ave., as part of the It's Summer group until July 30.

    Chauvin's figures are proudly non-photo-

    realistic, painted with diverse media and boast postmodern touches like
    subtle deployment of Armenian text in the paintings' backgrounds. Her
    training as a fashion designer at the Australian White House Institute
    of Design in Sydney is also more than evident in her obvious love of
    fabric and model-like poses in her colourful images.

    Q: How did you come about with the images and compositions we see in
    this show?

    I've travelled extensively in the Middle East and Europe and found so
    many other women of Armenian descent who were fascinated with my story
    and the fact that I was raised in Australia. That's what started me
    noticing how different Armenians were in all these different countries
    and how their cultural and moral views differed as the mores and
    reality of these other places rub off on the (Armenian) diaspora.

    Those differences were particularly evident in the Middle East where
    you had very restrictive cultures as compared to the liberal upbringing
    I had in Australia.

    This idea really started to come together when I found myself here
    and isolated from Armenian culture altogether and these memories
    bubbled back up.

    I started painting these images to explore the common ground all
    these women would have which would be the push and pull struggle to
    fit into a new country.

    Q: You mentioned to me a bit earlier that symbols where important in
    your work. Can you tell me about some of the symbolism that we can
    see in these paintings?

    You see a lot of pomegranates in the work because they are the national
    fruit of Armenia. You also see a lot of red, Prussian blue and black
    in my work, which relates back to a palate of colours used for years
    by Armenian artists. These colours refer back to the colours of the
    Armenian flag.

    I also personally like to paint fabric and shadows which relates back
    to 19th-century Armenian artists who used stark blackness and sheets
    of fabric to starkly shift to a darker palate rather than use more
    subtle changes of colour. I'm quite fond of using contrast in that way.

    Q: What's up next for you?

    I'm going to Armenia this year for the first time and I'm really
    wondering what I'll be feeling and seeing when I'm there.

    I'm assuming I'll be doing a lot of photo-documenting during my trip
    and will end up painting about that when I get back.

    GRAPHIC: Photo: Shaughn Butts, the Journal; Lara Chauvin and her
    painting, Onward into the past at the Lando Gallery.
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