Soraya Ghazi Lutes is a contemporary Realist painter living in Providence, Rhode Island. Her watercolor paintings focus on small, intricate still lives, intertwined with patterned backgrounds creating playful and bemusing compositions. 

Soraya was born in 1973 in White Plains, New York, to immigrant parents from Finland and India, but spent her formative years in Tampere, Finland. A happy childhood steeped in Finland’s love of nature and respect for tranquility instilled a deep sense of self in her.

At the age of 14, she returned to live in the US with her mother and brother. Soraya’s strength in creativity led her to pursue higher education in the visual arts at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she graduated in 1995 with a BFA in Textile Design.

In the following 20 years, Soraya worked in the Textile industry as a designer, small business owner, consultant to artisans in India, and as an in-house artist for mills in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

A chance opportunity given to her husband to restore the family estate of impressionist painter Frederick Frieske in Normandy France, propelled Soraya to an unexpected career change. In this bucolic and tranquil setting, she could concentrate solely on fine art.

Her first series of paintings drew strong inspiration from Russian Orthodox Icons, something she had been fascinated with since childhood trips to Finland’s border with Russia. These paintings have Intricate, gilded patterns of Islamic art as a backdrop with egg tempera painted fruits, drawn and presented like saints.

Soraya changed her medium to dry brush watercolor to infuse and incorporate background patterns as a stronger element in her work. This new series is more playful, brightly colored and the background pattern has equal importance to the subject matter. Creating paintings that weave the line between three-dimensional objects and the two-dimensional surfaces they rest on. This is Soraya’s second series of paintings.