Maja Ruznic paints ethereal groupings of figures that shift in and out of definition, evoking the hazy miasma of personal and collective memories.
Read MoreRuznic's luminous paintings combine dreamlike figuration with a scumbled abstraction. A variety of suggestive mark-making leaves the images ghostly, conveying echoes of ideas rather than anything definitive.
In The Return (2020), Ruznic uses what she describes as 'the drunken hand', an intuitive, loose painting process that relinquishes some of the artist's control. In the painting, three women emerge from layers of thinly applied paint, overlapping washes, and distorted edges. These are archetypes drawn from mythology—the Three Graces—but imbued by Ruznic with a symbolic melancholy.
Ruznic's painting process begins with thin stains of Gamsol-saturated pigment that create an initial composition, out of which she pulls details and figures through scumbled layers of additional stains. These are then sanded back to expose the texture of the canvas, a subtractive process that further disintegrates the outlines of her figures.
Thematically, Ruznic's works can be read as responses to her family history and cultural turmoil, especially in the context of the Bosnian War she fled from. Narratives around motherhood, generational trauma, and ritual are explored through references to cultural practices such as Slavic paganism and shamanism.
In Truth Seekers (2019), a trio of women could be astral projections, shamanistic scientists unleashing rays of healing light into their environment. However, her works also resist clear interpretation, with her sensitive mark-making suggesting memories, emotions, and states of mind. She describes recalling a memory of her mother during the Bosnian War while working on her painting Mother (2020)—a recollection of a warm embrace following a week-long separation. This manifested in the emotive use of blue in the painting.
More broadly, Ruznic's paintings speak to the complicated web of human history, as mediated through our own memories. Ruznic seeks communion with this history, perhaps even absolution and healing from a painful past. As she explains, 'Painting has become a way for me to touch what I couldn't reach'—reconnecting with her history and memorialising matriarchal ancestors.
