Distraction • Destruction • Reflection

For many years, I dreamed of traveling to Iran. When I finally made that journey last fall, I was overwhelmed —not only by the extraordinary beauty of its architecture, landscapes, and ancient history, but especially by the warmth and generosity of its people. Back in my studio, images simply began to flow out of me, inspired by Iran but born in imagination.

Then everything changed.

A few weeks after my return, protests, repression, and eventually war brought devastation to Iran. Communication stopped. What had begun as a joyful outpouring of images became a struggle—a war, in a sense, between me and my art. My ability to work became seriously undermined.

It is not until I returned from a spiritual pilgrimage to Bhutan that I found my way back. I realized that my Buddhist practice had deeply informed these paintings from the very beginning. Light appears not simply as a visual element, but as a glimpse of clarity within the complexities of human experience. The dark spaces are equally important.

My work explores the spaces where journey, memory, human connection, and transformation meet. Through layered surfaces and expressive figurative imagery, I create visual narratives that move between observation and imagination. Arches, corridors, stairways, and passages become allegories for our inner journey through darkness and light, certainty and mystery, confusion and awareness. Life rarely reveals itself to us in a straight line. The forms and pathways reflect its unpredictable nature and the spiritual practice of remaining present with whatever is.

Ultimately, my work is an invitation to look more closely: to cross boundaries, embrace connections, and find beauty in the layered, imperfect adventure of being human.

The tension between what separates us and what connects us remains at the heart of my work. This new body of paintings, however, marks a significant departure—both aesthetically and technically—as I move from printmaking to painting. Surfaces are built, obscured, scratched, and revealed, allowing the history of each painting to remain visible. Layers accumulate like the experiences and memories we share as human beings. Rather than beginning with a fixed destination, I allow the process itself to become a form of exploration. The act of painting becomes inseparable from the subject: a practice of searching, discovering, losing one’s way, and finding another opening. This new direction reflects something I have always valued in both art and life—the willingness to venture beyond the familiar.

September 2026