For Cruz, her creations are a private and unique type of language. She expresses deep feelings that are either still unconscious or difficult to convey with words. Cruz tries to find the House in her memory through her works, and then recreates the images on her canvas. Past experience and present thoughts entwine, and are illustrated meticulously stroke by stroke with a flair of intuition and fantasy, thus displaying the nostalgia and emotions deep in the artist’s memories. Tables, chairs, tea tables and furniture in the living room; cabinets, books and toys in the storage room; mirrors, portraits and photos on the walls all make appearances in Cruz’s artworks. These common items, combined with the sounds, warmth, and ambiance in the picture display Cruz’s unique memories of her family. The artist also employs various types of strokes, leaves marks of dripped oils, uses melancholic shades and an overly clean emptiness to create an unfamiliar, distance visual atmosphere. Here time is compressed and frozen into a model of space: the House that was once lived in is transformed into a somewhat familiar yet distance “scenery”. Mysterious, dim shadows flow about, ethereal as a slice of time or a freeze frame in a dream.
