Laguna College of Art + Design

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…

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 the basin of a hidden valley, a skewed rock pile breaks the silhouette of distant blue mountains. The already-fallen sun leaves a green sky in its wake. Without the heat of day to hold it back, a brisk chill quickly rises from the sandy ground. T…

Am I the only one in the throes of imposter syndrome in a room brimming with faith and heavenly adoration? I went to mega churches with my family when I was younger and witnessed the live performative baptisms, aerial Christmas eve dancers’ ex…

In these paintings I am attempting to capture the presence of awareness in the subject as well as the subtle nuances of their internal states as they express through their outer forms. I want to express a feeling of openness both in the gestural exp…

All living things communicate, but humans have the most complex systems for doing so with approximately 3000–6000 spoken languages. Our need for language is constant. Without it, we cease to be part of a community, a culture, a group. Our cohe…

My current body of work, entitled Kinesis, is a series of large scale figurative paintings in which I bridge science and the visual arts as I examine the perception of movement of both subject and viewer. Through the use of overlapping and varied de…

My work expresses my studies of the human form as well as my experiences with acting. As an actor, I looked closely at human behavior, giving me insights into our shared human experience and giving me the tools to express my own experiences through …

In the Light is a painted observation of our disconnection with the natural environment and how my own reconnection with nature has helped me sort out life’s most difficult questions and challenges. In developing a visual language to express t…

Is plastic surgery feminist? Why can I not see myself as a whole whenever I look into the mirror? Advertisements and social media instruct young women to meticulously analyze and obsess over their bodies. Why do I and others worship and partake in t…

My paintings reflect my recent life experience and my thoughts about old Chinese wisdom such as Taoism and yin-yang. Yin and yang reflect the symbiotic polarity in my paintings—love and loneliness, movement and stillness, solitude and connecti…