Interview with Mask Maker & Painter: Victoria Ramos

Victoria, thank you for agreeing to talk about your creativity. For our readers, Victoria is a friend from an virtual art course I took with Lisa Mann, Fine Artist. Victoria, you have recently relocated to Washington State. I’ve seen your art and love your painting style. Let’s dive into your inspirations and passions in your works.

1. What is your earliest memory of being creative that you intuitively thought you’d be coming back to time and again?

My mother took me to ballet classes as a child. From my graduation of toe shoes, I shifted into modern dance. At the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn I studied graphic design for regular income and achieved a minor in Dance. In my studies, I painted while remaining insecure about reproducing reality. I re-birthed my painting a few years ago. My graphic design pursuit turned into communication design, advertising art. My path, however, resulted in becoming a fine art photographer. My education in dance pivoted into a practice that led to becoming a yoga teacher.

2. What inspires your art? Do you have an idea, a picture, a dream that forms your painting?

I don’t have an idea before beginning a painting. Mask making is another creative art I do as a result of a journey, a shamanic meditation, or a dream figure. I create as a result of having a response to a stimulation. The art I produce is a relationship; I am one part of the relationship and the piece is the other; the partnership begins as the piece and I carry on. A work may lie dormant; later I return and the relationship is renewed. I have been studying dream-tending, a therapy related to dream figures. (References: Carl Jung‘s theory of active imagination (see his same-named book). Karen Darcy Lubbers’ Bodymap Protocol: Integrating Art Therapy and Focusing in the Treatment of Adults with Trauma).

3. Creatives often have multiple creative channels they enjoy doing. Beyond painting, what other creativity brings you inner peace and joy?

I like making my home a work of art. I am a home body; it is important that my visual living space is comfortable. I like beautiful things. I have a degree in Fashion; I used to make my own clothes. Now I assemble objects together. Beauty and grace make me love life.

4. What do you wish I’d asked?

People say that love, if anything will save humanity. Beauty and awe will save it. Think of it in a rusted tractor, the beauty of grief, the beauty of sorrow and suffering, of a sunset, a fresh snowfall or a joyful child. Find it in the grace of being: broken down into a state of suspended amazement, or, as a smell, a texture; seeing and hearing an ocean wave or a tree; seeing wildlife, a rock formation, a storm, or a mountain. Beauty is being present for the wind being knocked back into you. Creating is what we do all the time, our life is a work of art continually evolving.

—Written by Amanda L. Mottorn, 2022, ©, author of Finding Moksha: One Woman’s Path in Uncertain Times and Artist at Modern Moksha Designs & Publishing.