Lokahi emerged after a summer visit to Niagara Falls in 2022, where Ruben and Sonya experienced the Falls from the Three Sisters area. The immense movement of water, the meeting of natural forces, and even the name of the place carried an unexpected personal resonance: Sonya is one of three sisters, and the sister they were visiting is herself the mother of two daughters.Soon afterward, three feminine forms appeared in Ruben's painting — unusual within a body of work more often centered around a solitary emerging figure. They are not portraits of particular women, but together they suggest kinship, connection, and the invisible bonds that hold people to one another.The title Lokahi speaks to unity and harmony. Here, those ideas are expressed through movement: figures reaching, floating, and existing within the same flowing field, each distinct yet inseparable from the whole.The painting also marked a quiet turning point in Ruben's practice. After years of painting primarily on wood, Lokahi became his first completed oil painting on canvas — an appropriate beginning for a work shaped by water, movement, and coming together.2022 · Oil on canvas · 50 × 38 in.
