Anahit Etemadi

Iranian-born artist Anahit Etemadi creates portraits that convey heartfelt emotion with her characteristically sumptuous color and texture. With deft rendering skills, Etemadi crafts beautiful images of humanity, later adding collage and mixed media elements that imbue the piece with a powerfully emotive character. She pours herself into each work. “While the painting is evolving, it pulls my energy and passion into it until it is completed,” Etemadi explains. “[It] embodies my passion, feeling and energy…forever.”

Her subjects range from infamous celebrities and important world figures, to personal images that often deconstruct the figure in dynamic and symbolic ways. Etemadi has a particular fondness for the female form, believing that women have a unique consciousness and connectedness to the world. Behind the dazzling eyes of Marilyn Monroe or the arched body of a female figure, we see washes of modulating color streaming down the canvas like a waterfall. This stylistic convention displays the fragility of human life, the role of chance in our existence, and the fleeting days that are uniquely ours.