La Vie en Bleu

A native to Mexico City with her homebase currently in Vancouver, Miriam Aroeste forever remains a citizen of the Universe. Miriam’s passion for travel sent her overseas in her twenties to the art capitals of Paris and Rome, where she lived and studied amongst artistic contemporaries and grand figures of knowledge. In Rome, Miriam studied cinematography, filmmaking, and script writing under the renowned Ettore Scola, and during which she also met Italian film masters Fellini and Antonioni. 

Her curiosity was insatiable, however, and for nearly 30 years after her initial post-secondary studies began, Miriam was in and out of school in Italy, Mexico City, and Vancouver learning all facets of art practices and media. In fostering her technical merits as a visual artist, she began with a love for sculpture by learning from numerous instructors and in formal universities, of which her bronze-working father was an early influence. Her painting, however, came later with her enrollment at the prestigious Emily Carr University of Art and Design where she studied Fine Arts and Photography. 

As a starting point to her paintings, Miriam draws inspiration from her environment and surroundings, but she paints what she feels; in this sense, her paintings are a timeline of her innermost private thoughts like a visual diary that she invites viewers to engage with. Miriam leaves a sacrosanct part of herself on each canvas as a gift to her viewers and collectors as her artistic truth is spread throughout the world with them.

Miriam’s painting practice is strongly focused on Abstract Expressionist and Minimalist traditions in her works. Her abstract themes explore a universal understanding that transcends gender, race o subject matter; it is deliberately inclusive and open. Her paintings are ultimately explorations of line, colour and gesture that stand as mirrors to your emotions and allow an emotive interaction that strikes instant connectivity between the viewer and the work. Adjacent to the conceptual, Miriam’s work operates on an instinctive, spiritual level that is akin to instrumental music: despite the lack of didacticism or deliberate narrative, her visual image traverses the human eye and converses with each viewer’s individual psyche to provoke both conscious and subconscious thought as well as spontaneous emotional responses.

Her decades long devotion to her art career has resulted in the acclaim Miriam most deserves. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout Canada, the US, France, and Mexico, and her paintings are collected locally and internationally. Miriam has also had the honour of being invited to participate at the Florence Biennale.