I was born and raised in Iran and moved to the US as a teenager. While working on my Computer Science degree at Columbia University in New York City, I became introduced for the first time to the visual arts and it was love at the first sight. After graduating and a few years of studio art training, I earned an M.F.A. from the New York Academy of Art in 2000.

When I first began making art, my primary love was creating large figurative sculptures. I made quite a few of them including two very successful ones: Proud Maree, a life-size trotting horse that was the centerpiece of 1997 Hampton Classic, and Ascension, an outdoor bronze composition permanently on the campus of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Later, I began experimenting with other mediums such as photography, video art, mixed media, and painting. A photograph from that period is in MOMA’s “Life in the City” collection in New York. Gradually, I shifted my attention to painting. For about a year and a half, I was part of the FANY collective (with the ethnographic agenda of capturing New York city’s vibrant life). Then I gradually shifted to large portrait work. Once I moved to southern California in 2005, I continued painting new series of nudes and landscapes. But close-up portraiture painting grew into an obsession that I have been engaged in exclusively for the past couple of years. Nor was content with just the human face. Dogs entered the picture once I became a first time dog owner.

My wife Roxanne is a cultural Anthropologist and began a documentary film project back in 2000. Once we met in 2003, I gladly became involved with the project and served as a producer. Entitled “Plastic Flowers Never Die”, it chronicles the rememberance of the eight year war between Iran and (1980-1988) and its enduring influence in the Iranian society. It was finally completed in 2008 and has already featured in four film festivals. Later this year, DER distributors will release it to the general public.