Myriam Wares
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Sep 26
- 5 min read
Myriam Wares is a Canadian artist whose work mixes the everyday with the imaginative through detailed, hand-drawn images. She builds imagined scenes by bringing together natural elements, decorative patterns, and figures that seem to follow their own quiet logic. Her drawings are intuitive but carefully arranged, often starting from a visual spark or memory that grows into something more layered. Wares draws from architecture, textiles, childhood objects, and natural forms, arranging them in ways that feel close yet slightly unsettled. She works mainly with ink and digital color.
Q: Nature and mythology often overlap in your work. What keeps pulling you back to that mix?
A: I started drawing garden scenes because I was looking for a setting I could reuse across multiple illustrations—one that would provide a framework for what I felt I needed to express. The idea was to establish a stable structure within which I could have the freedom to experiment. Within these natural expanses, I’m free to express myself and dictate the rules of what is possible.
The same principle underlies my use of mythology. Even though I don’t follow any specific mythological canon, I draw from various sources: classical mythology, biblical episodes, or local folktales I’ve encountered during my travels. My intention isn’t to illustrate myths per se, but rather to use their symbols in service of whatever I want to communicate.
Sometimes, straightforward reality feels limiting in how it conveys abstract ideas like emotions or lived experience. The result is a form of magical realism, which feels infinite in its possibilities.
I don’t know if these themes will define my entire artistic career, but for now, I keep returning to them—there is still so much in that space I’ve yet to explore.
Q: Your images often sit between dream and threat. Do you see them more as safe spaces or as confrontations?
A: I definitely see them as safe spaces. They reflect my inner world, which is where I feel most secure—away from the gaze of others and the chaos of the uncontrollable outside world. This doesn’t mean they are free of tension or confrontation. On the contrary, creating these dreamlike scenes allows me to explore deeper, more difficult emotions—a form of catharsis. When I place a heavy feeling I’ve been carrying into an external idyllic space, it loses some of its weight and becomes easier to confront. Often, a sense of uneasiness emerges in each piece, even if I don’t always intend it.
I think this is simply a reflection of life itself. For all the beauty that exists in the world, things are rarely unidimensional.
Q: Color in your paintings feels both lush and uneasy. How do you decide where to push that tension?
A: Colors carry their own language, contributing to the broader narrative of a work and offering cues to the viewer. I’ve always seen them as tools of emphasis, guiding the gaze toward what I consider most important within the composition. Playing with contrast and light helps achieve this. What interests me most is the inherent ambiguity of color—its ability to hold multiple, even contradictory, meanings. Green evokes lushness and abundance, yet also belongs to the wilderness, which can be unsettling. Red suggests danger, but equally vitality. White can imply purity and cleanliness, but also coldness and sterility. This range of possible meanings is something to embrace in art, not to avoid. I don’t want viewers to feel they must choose a single interpretation to a color—or to any symbol, for that matter. The nuance of color is precisely what makes it so evocative.
Q: You work across illustration and fine art. Does one feed the other, or do you keep them separate?
A: Even though I see them as two distinct practices, they feed each other. While I bring my own style and creativity to commissioned work, it is centered around the specific needs of a client. Commercial illustrations serve the project for which they are created—their purpose lies outside of themselves.
By contrast, my personal art is created for its own sake. It is where I am completely free to explore my inner world without restraint. These works are about me and my life; I’m not considering any scope beyond the artwork itself. That said, working in a similar aesthetic style across both practices does create overlap. For example, I sometimes license personal pieces for commercial use.
This may alter the context of the work to some extent, but I don’t mind if it allows me to make a living doing what I love. On the other hand, my personal style has grown out of commissioned projects.
It was through client work that I learned to use digital tools like Photoshop and began developing an aesthetic that feels authentically mine. This foundation allows me to create personal work with an ease I might not have otherwise achieved.
Q: Many of your figures feel caught between states of being. What draws you to that in-between space?
A: The desire to explore ambiguity and nuance drives my work. Experiences can feel both profound and mundane, exciting and terrifying, exhausting and rewarding, bitter and sweet.
Things are rarely entirely good or bad; situations and experiences are complex. My art is a way to illustrate that complexity.
For example, in "La Domestication," the main character is placed in a beautiful, curated garden, yet the expression on her face conveys concern and uncertainty. Her environment seems safe, but she is trapped within a maze whose way out she may not know. Another example is the woman in "La Retombée."
There is a sense of mournfulness in her posture, even as she rests in a protected, safe place. The opposite occurs in "La Fontana": although the women appear to be bathing blissfully, a threatening figure looms above them.
I don’t want viewers to feel compelled to choose a single interpretation. Rather, I invite them to embrace the multiplicity of meaning—to hold potentially contradictory feelings at once. After all, that mirrors the full experience of being human.
Q: Ambiguity plays a big role in your practice. What makes you resist giving clear answers in an image?
A: I generally dislike overexplaining my artwork because it can prevent viewers from experiencing it firsthand. This is my philosophy toward art in general. I personally enjoy going to a museum without prior knowledge of what I’m seeing, then reading about a piece after spending time with it and forming my own interpretation.
Of course, I create work with an intended meaning, but that meaning is deeply personal. The beauty of art is that someone else can experience a piece through their own lived experience and derive a meaning entirely independent of my intention.
Even though this means I lose some control over how the work is perceived, I see this as something to celebrate rather than constrain.
In this way, I like to think my work isn’t just about me or my feelings; it can also resonate with others. What the artist intended matters, but so does the meaning the viewer brings to it.
