Laguna College of Art + Design

My current body of work explores notions of mortality, vulnerability, loss, and survival. Over the last decades, these ideas have shaped my emotional landscape and have led to an investigation of the psychological and physiological circumstances tha…

Holding Still and Letting Go captures powerful personal emotions and intimate experiences and transforms them symbolically as universal expressions for the human condition. The themes in this collection are based on two profound periods—during…

My artwork often reflects an inner world that can be described as “Synthetic Realism.” Robert McKee, a former art professor at Yale University, used the label to loosely describe a form of art that although rooted in realism, manipulates…

My work defines and explores the concept of floral life-cycles as a metaphor for human existence. I draw inspiration from my personal garden, which I cultivate for research purposes, as well as other natural spaces. This closeness to floral life-cyc…

Artistic evolution is highly personal and unique for each person. As a formally trained illustrator, I’m intrinsically afraid of change and desperately hold onto processes that feel familiar. However, I know that growth is full of risks and un…

Passive-Aggressive is a series of six drawings and six paintings that focus on voyeurism and repressed male fantasies. It should also be seen as a kind of visual diary that records two years of struggle, trial and error in a post-graduate painting p…

I think of my paintings as an extension of street photography. The photograph has had a long-standing tradition of being at war with the painting world; however, I found that it is used in my work beyond the traditional means of reference, and is so…

This thesis work examines themes of family and marriage. In particular it explores domesticity with its associated anxiety, and the attempt to escape from such. For me this anxiety stems from the uncertainty that originates with the possibility of f…

The subjects of my work are portraits of myself and people that I know, and still lifes composed of objects that have relevance to the individuals in the portraits. My purpose is simple yet challenging: to promote, through careful observation, an ho…

I address the range of human experience and emotion in watercolor paintings. Watercolor, much like emotions, is unpredictable and requires special care to harness its infinitely varied and nuanced complexities. Creating such works requires forgivene…

Mass media is the source of inspiration for my body of work, which I have titled Seen and Forgotten. Contemporary societies that have access to modern media formats are bombarded with photographic images. Newspapers, magazines, video, film and the I…

Growing up in the Mormon religion, I had the unusual experience of being taught about a female deity. While many Mormon women find the idea of a female deity empowering, some are disturbed that she is nearly invisible within Mormon religious discour…

As a painter who hunts, my art concerns the dialectics of hunting. How can I say, “I love deer” while I am in pursuit to shoot one? Why is it that I am both remorseful and happy when I stand over an elk whose life I cut short? Where is t…

My paintings move through the shadow of my past life. I was born and grew up in post-revolutionary Iran, in a culture dominated by patriarchal governments and households. As a young woman in Iran, I saw wars, protest, and revolution. My early experi…

In this thesis, I question, reflect on, and navigate the cultural and societal challenges women face in Iran through my oil paintings. I create visual narratives with archetypal imagery depicting women's multifaceted experiences. Using symbolic imag…

My aim is to make strong, memorable images that invite the viewer to participate in a narrative. The narrative is a means of expressing emotions and meaning and allows freedom in the interpretation of ideas. Passage explores themes of traditional fa…

The formal elements of my work respond to conflicting visual dualities in water. Water is a substance that can be both transparent and opaque. It allows its mysteries to stay hidden, or to loom eerily beneath its glassy surface. Realism defines thes…

Our ethics, logic, and aesthetics are highly dependent on the environment to which we belong. In one community such as a country, family, ethnicity, or generation, people may hold beliefs that feel like “common sense” to the people who b…