Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Ava Tsoutsos

Keeper

“Keeper” is based on the artist’s mother, positioned within a layered landscape drawn from Huntsville, Ontario. As both subject and quiet author of the family archive, she is depicted through a merging of moments—her presence interwoven with partial glimpses of the artist’s father and sister as a child. These overlapping figures speak to the life she constructed, shaped in contrast to a more difficult past.The surrounding landscape functions not only as place but as memory itself, holding and reflecting the histories embedded within it. Through subtle distortions and layered imagery, the work resists a singular narrative, instead presenting a portrait formed through accumulation, care, and lived experience.