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Peaceful – Thoughtful

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PEACEFUL – THOUGHTFUL

– Shahla Mansouri

October 27 – November 21

By Appointment Only

Thursday – Saturday: 11am-4pm

 

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE VIRTUAL EXHIBITION

 

 

 

Artist Statement:

“Here, I have focused on three elements: woman, poetry, and nature. I have also emphasized collage, as my technique.

The female figures are painted looking away, with their backs to the viewer, immersed in thought. The poetry written out, surrounding them, comes from Nezami Ganjavi, the Iranian poet (13th century). The poems are on love, and peace.

Woman, and Nature are taken as symbols of growth, fertility, patience, and endurance. The Sun and the Moon appear a lot in the works. Use of various textures, by way of collage, also appear as my way of showing these feelings. I have used paper, cloth, and metal, as my chosen media. 

We live in rapidly changing times. It is worth taking time, looking at ourselves.” 

– Shahla Mansouri

 

 

“”Absolute feminine”, I say. There is a woman or two, silhouette with just drawing a line in a shape of 

a woman, showing her body style and clothes or an actual type, a realistic figure of that. 

The paintings also contain two types of background which is a simple colored background or deep background of patterns and nature. The female is mostly a monochrome type of different colors or grays, on her skin and hair and mostly wearing a typical skirt. The nature in the background which is showing flowers, leaves and some marks of random twigs and dots, just pushes the main object of the artwork, the female, to the front layer of the painting.

A female is the main object of her paintings, mostly showing her back to the viewer, as she sees or thinks about something that involves the viewer to look deeply in the emotion of the woman. The feeling of the object’s mood is all about silence and calmness. As the two types of figures, silhouette or realistic shows, can not be naked, as it has been shown with clothes even in linear form.  It presents manners too as a slight familiarity personally I have with the artist herself, Shahla, cares so much about manners and ethics.”

– Sina Gahremoni ( friend of Shahla Monsouri )

 

About the Artist:

The best moments of my life are when I paint. I am so immersed in colors, lines and dots that I forget the passage of time.
Especially when I paint, I listen to music. In schools of Iran , more attention is paid to mathematics, science and literature, so that art and sports do not flourish as a result of artistic talents.
After graduating, I studied in my favorite field, a bachelor’s degree in painting from the Islamic Azad University of Tehran (Private University of Arts). At university, I became acquainted with different techniques and experimented with different artistic styles.
Unfortunately, we did not have a female model to paint at university, so a few of my friends and I formed a group and took turns painting each other.
Painting a female figure in Iran has many limitations. Many curves of the female body must be covered to allow public display, so we held our first private group exhibition, which was very well received.
I liked to draw female figures, so I started to combine figures with nature. Collage plays a colorful role in my works. Debbie Allen said, “But out of limitations comes creativity,” and I agree with her. Combining the two helped me stay with the figures I meant to show. 
My painting style is expressionism.
 
Among the artistic activities I have participated in:
– 18 group exhibitions in Iran, England and America
– 3 solo exhibitions in Iran and the United States
– 4 murals in Iran and the United States
– Illustration of 15 volumes of educational books
– Painting Instructor

 

click here to preview the virtual exhibition

VIRTUAL EXHIBITION

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