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Maja Ruznic’s ghostly oil paintings dwell on memory and ritual. These scenes, at various scales, contain figures wrestling and enacting cerebral themes, each’s softly conveyed narratives seemingly belonging to us all. Her most recent series softens the hues she’s used in previous work for more earthly tones.

On works in “Sleep Seekers,” shown below, the painter says that “colors and values are softer and the figures dissolve into the space that holds them. Thinking of the environment as a character, I search for its history, memories and secrets hidden in the soil. The figures are always doing something on or to the land and the fluids from their various activities seep into the soil and evaporate during scorching summers. They dig and search for stories only the soil can tell, intuiting that they are made of the same matter as the land.”