Կռիւ (Grieve)
Oil On Canvas, 48 x 60 inches, 2023.
When grief and struggle share the same breath, love becomes impossible to ignore.
In Armenian, the word for struggle is “կռիւ”—pronounced exactly like the English word grieve. That collision of meaning became the emotional and conceptual foundation for this painting, created in the aftermath of my father’s death.
կռիւ (Grieve) was born out of the harrowing, disoriented hours I spent alone in a hospital, navigating medical decisions and witnessing his final moments.
That is where this painting lives.
I intentionally painted this portrait larger than life. In a society that often renders the elderly invisible, pushes them to the margins, and leaves them out of the conversation, I wanted this work to demand space. To make my father’s presence impossible to ignore. This scale asserts dignity. It refuses erasure.
The painting holds the duality of grief and struggle—կռիւ—in its strokes, its silence, and its weight. It’s a meditation on how love becomes endurance, on the injustice of death, and the human need to be seen, even in our most vulnerable final hours.
Through this act of making, I bear witness. I grieve. And I make visible what so often remains unspoken.
