Thinking about Armenian motifs feels very deep to me. I honestly didn’t know where to begin. Anyone who has been in Armenia will understand this feeling. When an artist paints the purple mountains, it is not abstraction—it is reality. The colors you see in Armenia are truly like that in real life.

What you see in the works of Martiros Saryan, Hakob Kojoyan, and Minas Avetisyan is not abstraction—it is lived reality. Armenia’s nature genuinely holds those colors.

My father, Ruben, loved his homeland deeply. Nothing, except his illness, could have forced him to leave the country he was born in. He loved his home, his life, and that devotion is reflected in every piece of his art.

The way he draws branches, all that nervous energy—you can even see it in his trees and lines the movement in the strokes, the tension in the shapes—it all carries emotion. Nothing in his work is still or empty.

Even when he paints nature, it is not just representation. It is feeling translated into form. The trees are not just trees—they hold his inner rhythm, his memories, his sensitivity to the world around him.

Even during Armenia’s difficult winters and times of war, he still painted with love. That love never disappeared from his work.

— Alexandra Manukyan (A Daughter's Memory)