Art Gallery Of Ontario

Vija Celmins: I painted everything in my studio and I was starting to look for other images to use. This is a letter from 1968. And it's a letter from my mother. I used to have the letters drop in on the floor of the studio through the mail slot. I was starting to do some drawings. Giving painting a little break, and this is one of the early drawings, getting kind of used to using a pencil. Gary Garrels: She added what look like stamps, but are very tiny drawings of war scenes, and disasters, and bombings, which recall her memories of having grown up in Europe. Her family fled her native country, Latvia, in 1944, just as the Soviet troops were invading. They spent the next four years moving between refugee camps in Germany until they were resettled to Indianapolis, where Vija then grew up. She moved there at the age of 10, not speaking any English, and drawing was something that was incredibly important for her. So this drawing of the letter, I think is a reference back to the idea of being displaced. In m