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My
Story
I
was 10 years old, sitting in the courtyard of our house in
Teheran one afternoon when my brother came running in with
a stack of postcards. "Look at these!" he exclaimed. They
were prints of paintings by a group of Russian artists called
the travelers, paintings of barge haulers on the Volga, Cossacks
writing a letter to the Turkish king, and the return of a jailed
man to his family. I had never seen paintings like
this. I had yet to visit a museum and had only seen
Persian miniatures in poetry books, and a few murals in our
old house. I was in awe. I gazed at
each painting once, twice, 5, 10, 15 times till the scenes
were imprinted on my mind.
Over
the following months, a slew of cultural tokens from the North
and West streamed into our courtyard: paintings
by Ilya Repin, Vasily Perov, Surikov and books by Jules Verne,
Victor Hugo, Stephan Zweig, Tolstoy, and Hemingway---whatever
treasures my brother could procure from the Iranian-Russian
Friendship Society or bookstores in downtown Teheran. We
stacked the books on the shelf--I would read them years
later. But the paintings I kept close at hand, beside
my bed or in my pocket.
Then
one day, my brother, the little ambassador of culture, came
back from the bazaar with a bag full of surprises-- canvas,
brushes, and wooden sticks with which to make a frame, linseed
oil, and small paper packages with vibrant pigments of azure
blue, canary yellow, vermillion, and emerald green. "Now
we can paint pictures ourselves!" he told me.
I
was amazed and fell in love with every aspect of this new endeavor,
mixing the oil with the bright powders, watching my brother
stretch the canvas, nail it to the frame, and cover it with
a layer of white gypsum. I watched him attempt his first
painting, a basket of apples which magically emerged on the
canvas within a few hours. I taught myself to paint through
imitation of the simpler paintings we had in our piles of postcards
and continued by copying some of the masterpieces I had accumulated
over the years--an old beggar who looked like a sage, a lady
in red sulking beside her lover.
It
had not yet occurred to me to paint what I saw around me even
though my surroundings were lush with beauty. Our small
courtyard garden was vibrant with the blossoms of cherry trees,
pansies, hyacinth in springtime, and roses in summertime. The
old streets of Teheran had clay colored buildings with arches
and stunning mosaics. In the middle of the summer,
I would sleep on the rooftop, lying on my back with my arms
outstretched, staring at the sky with its thousand and thousand
of stars. I felt like I was holding the whole dome of
the sky within the expanse of my arms and when I squinted
my eyes, and looked at each single star, I thought I could
see it dancing in the breeze of the late night. But
I would't paint any of this for years, and when I did, these
scenes would be resurrected only in patches, as if in dreams.
When
I attended college and medical school, I painted less and less
frequently.
Then I moved to America. I was a doctor and a mother, and
for many years only dreamt of art, observing it with longing
and awe as I leafed through our growing collection of art books
or stood before paintings on occasional trips to the museum.
Then
one day, after dropping my children off at a class, I passed
Pearl Art Store on Route 17 in New Jersey. Something
compelled me to take the next exit and turn around. This
was well before Pearl became a superstore. The store
was charming, the aisles were narrow and cramped and the wooden
shelves were crowded with paints and brushes. I was giddy
with excitement.
For the first time in decades, I bought my supplies. I
started painting again by copying the masters, this time a few
paintings by Magritte. But I quickly grew bored of
imitating, and realized it was time to paint my own visions.
My
paintings are mostly inspired by visions I have when I wake
in the early morning. I will often spend days thinking
about what I've seen before I put brush to canvas. I've
never attached myself to any style or school of painting, though
a dream-like irrationality has always emerged in my work. Over
the last 24 years, I have managed to create a body of work
in the cracks of time between mothering and doctoring. This
work has never been exhibited publicly and is presented here
for the first time.
The
poet Robert Bly once said, "A painting is a pitcher full of
the invisible." The invisible is the backstory--my
story, and the stories that viewers project onto the painting. The
invisible is what springs in our own imagination when we view
a painting, it is how we connect the dots, or fill in the blanks. I
have heard various interpretations of some of my paintings,
and I enjoy the multiplicity of ideas that have been evoked.
I have not attempted to offer something linear or representational. In
my paintings, there are images, there are suggestions, and there
is space for the viewer to imagine. My hope is that the
paintings will stimulate thought and stir the spirit and emotions
of the people who view them.
****This site is dedicated to my brother in appreciation for his curious mind and generous spirit****
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