Rubeena Ratcliffe

Contemporary Painter

Vancouver, British Columbia

Rubeena Ratcliffe creates narrative paintings that center the solitary female figure in moments of quiet contemplation and everyday ritual. Her intimate spatial portraits blur the line between the mundane and the imaginative, uncovering interior worlds that feel both personal and poetic.

Rubeena has painted since she was three, long before she trained as an architect. Her work later took her across Canada, the U.S., India and the Netherlands. In Amsterdam she studied sixteenth-century art and spent time at the Rijksmuseum.

With a degree in architecture, Rubeena paints with intentional structure and sensitivity, her compositions shaped by the female gaze, richly hued palettes and delicate hatchwork. Painting became her vocation while she was at home raising her family, and each piece is a meditation on presence, memory and the stories found in stillness.

She holds a Master of Architecture from Dalhousie University. The Vancouver Nordstrom(all Nordstroms across Canada) unforunately closed down, but they did bring in two pieces into their collection. I also have a very large piece in the flagship Nordstrom in Seattle and 2 very large pieces in Bellevue Nordstrom in Washington

Nordstrom has two of her works in their permanent collection, and a large piece hangs in Bellevue Nordstrom in Washington. Her paintings have been featured in Azure and Western Living. Born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Rubeena now lives and works in Vancouver with her family, her cat Carl and her dog Woody.