"Maroon Pathways" Painting

Art has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I began drawing and painting around the age of four, and growing up in Iran, art became much more than something I enjoyed. It became a place of freedom, refuge, and survival.
I grew up in an environment where artistic expression was not always encouraged or valued in the same way I later experienced in the Western world. Still, I continued to draw and paint. During school, especially in religious and history classes where students were being pressured to accept certain political and religious ideas, I found my own quiet way of escaping. I would turn my attention to my paper and sketch. While the teacher spoke, I entered another world through lines, shapes, faces, and forms. Art gave me a private space where my mind could remain free.
That relationship with art has stayed with me.
I do not define myself by one particular artistic style. I am drawn instead to shapes, forms, textures, colors, and compositions that make each work unique, interesting, beautiful, and meaningful. I often begin without knowing exactly where a piece will take me. I allow the work to develop through the process, almost as if each piece gradually reveals what it wants to become.
When I create, I become deeply absorbed in the process. I lose my sense of time and place and enter a state of flow where the outside world becomes quiet. What once gave me a place of refuge has become something even deeper: a place of praise, joy, freedom, and serenity.
For me, making art is not simply about producing an object. It is an experience of discovery. Each work has its own life, and my role is to listen, respond, and allow it to become what it needs to be.