Val Magarian is currently a 2nd year MFA student at School of the Art Institute of Chicago

My drawings and paintings start from personal memories, such as of my family and the desert where I was raised. The desert sage paintings show large expanses of sagebrush, each with its own particular shape, and yet miniaturized to the point that it is insignificant within the larger picture. In the most recent sage painting the plants are barely formed, indicated only by abbreviated marks. In these landscapes as well as the portraits I am most interested in this balance between something being important (and cared for with utmost sentimentality) and yet still entirely insignificant. Although I hint at stories I generally do not show any particular events. I create pictures of slow, non-event time in which subjects are barely there or disappearing. The thought that we are small, existing for only a brief moment, both comforts and frightens me.

Thoughts on earlier work:
In my earlier work I made abstract and shifting landscapes, often containing miniature human activity. Recently it has become especially important to me to show specific people and places. This desire to be specific is also what led to my animated characters. I wanted them, first off, to be entertaining -- to be amusing despite suggesting something more complex. This is very different from the solemness in my current drawings and paintings. All of my work, however, shares in particular the desire to hint at a larger -- and to leave it only partially told.