Misty Dream Painting

Apama Shahrzad is a Toronto based artist and designer whose abstract works focus on the body, landscape and the human psyche. Across different media, she experiments with her palette, with both traditional and non-traditional materials and techniques. The artist’s incessant craving for creative freedom has led her on a journey to explore these materials for their expressive potential. Apama developed her unique artistic vision by primarily drawing inspiration from her own imagination. For Apama, painting is a release, and an explosion of self-expression that does not end with a conventional painterly application. ​ Her sweeping brushstrokes are punctuated by tactile materials and unexpected shadows. Apama bravely explores the boundaries of her art by layering color, and creating tension through varying textures and depths, such as those created by sculptural wire forms that protrude out of otherwise two-dimensional paintings. Materials and colors are chosen for their ability to evoke emotions and references outside of the composition. The wire becomes both a structure as well as a barrier, concealing and yet giving form to the marks and movements underneath. The premise of Apama’s artistic practice is to discover the never-before-seen through the accumulation of these different layers: a raw manifestation of the boundaries of human cognition, rendering the subconscious bare before the eyes. The resulting works leave the viewer to interpret their meaning...transporting them to the frontiers of human cognition where innermost fears and desires reside. Beyond the canvas, she fearlessly combines, with harmonious effect, the jarring and the serene as an interior designer.