Chamber 51

“Ultrasound” my latest painting, has been an exercise in channeling group creativity through my facebook page.  Almost every idea in it’s development was contributed by people through comments on photos of the unfinished canvas.  I often say that my best work is a result of happy accidents along the way – changes in direction that are inspired by elements of the image as I put them down on canvas.  Having others chime in on the series of Rorshach tests that span my process expands the creative input significantly.  It’s not that I’m relinquishing control, I still have final say on what gets incorporated – “I’m the Decider” 😉 – but this way I’m the curator of a much larger pool of ideas that may not necessarily be my own.  Plus, it’s always fun (and funny) to see what images are conjured up in other people’s minds when they look at something nebulous.

This is how it went. Click on the images to see the original facebook threads.

It all started with a blob.

Someone said it looked like a baseball mitt, so I hollowed it out.

Now a couple of folks saw a baby, specifically: “baby wrapped in a blanket” and “a baby in the womb”. Another person got a “sound” vibe (probably because it looked like a shell). So I went with a baby…wearing headphones.

I decided that I wanted the baby-container to echo a madonna-with-child so I manipulated it a bit.

A friend had recently bought me flowers for my apartment (not something I usually purchase for myself), so I had flowers on my mind.

More flowers…sunflowers!

The woman needed some texture.

At this point I was wondering whether I should stop before I smothered the baby. A few people said I should stop, but I wasn’t convinced. Some said I needed more in the top left, I got suggestions for “one bird and one bee” and “A butterfly would look great!”. I went to work on the butterfly, eventually deciding that I needed a second one. Now I felt it was done, all that was left was to name it.

I got a bunch of really great suggestions for the name, but in the end “Ultrasound” was the best one. Quite fitting that the process that created the painting was responsible for naming it too.

If you feel like you’d enjoy being a part of this brainstorming in the future and haven’t done so already, please “like” the Shirzad Khusrokhan Art page.

The saxophone player and bassist in this painting emerged in a very rough form after a hurried improvisation, only to be abandoned for more than year. When I took it up again I had a very specific concept I wanted to get down on the canvas.

“The Quartet” is an attempt to visually depict how the average listener perceives a live band. The solo instrument – in this case the saxophone – is the object of focus for the listener, and hence is rendered in crisp detail. Things get fuzzier when you move beyond it. The bass is definitely there … prominent, but not particularly clear – almost a silhouette. The piano is far away in the background, really faint, hard to make out. It really is all about that saxophone. Didn’t even realize there was a fourth musician.

The canvas on which Atlas ended up started out as a painting called “Improv in C-minor”. Even though I did take a photograph of it, it was never complete in my mind and at one point I decided to try adding some translucent layers to it – completely ruined it, got mad at myself for messing it up and then just painted the whole thing red. That was the end of that.

The red canvas sat around for a while, then I doodled some black paint on it, and again ignored it for a couple of years. There were a few failed attempts to create something interesting with plain black on a red background, that ended up being nixed with a big black ball. Finally Atlas emerged, carrying the ball and the painting finally had a direction.

OK, so now here was Atlas carrying a big black ball. The question of what should go in the ball was posed to a few friends. My friend Leslie suggested a tree – that seemed promising, so I set to work. The green wasn’t showing up too well on the black, so I decided to chalk it out with white first, as I often do when starting to paint on a dark background. All of a sudden the branches started to look like neurons and so I began to work on a brain instead. The brain took some refining and re-working. I abandoned early attempts to make it translucent in favor of a more fleshy feel.

The name Atlas Drugged came from my neighbor at the time, Alex – they were literally the first words out of his mouth when he saw it, and it stuck.

I was recently invited to join some incredibly talented artists and musicians at Conception III. Since it’s a group show, there’s limited wall space for my paintings and most of them won’t fit, so rather than just put one or two up, I decided to try to get some new, smaller works ready in time. I’ve had a few smaller canvasses that had been abandoned lying around, and this was one of them: an improvisation that went nowhere – originally titled “Improv in F”.

I started by flipping it, paintin the parts that I didn’t like blue, and adding a violin’s F hole. Still not much happening.

The big inspiration came when I realized that the painting needed heart.

Heart looks like an Octopus. Hmmm – this needs a tentacle.

Somehow the violin made a reappearance in the end of the tentacle. Came up with the title “Playing by Heart”.

Now the blues started to look too plain so I started messing with them. That seemed to carve out an upside-down ear shape on the left.

So I went to work on the ear, but to do that I flipped the canvas over. Now I like it better this way up. Maybe I’ll call it “Playing by Ear” instead.

…or maybe it should be the other way. I’m not sure. I guess it can go either way. When I show it tonight, I think I’ll label it both ways.

WOAH! This looks cool. Pity I can’t do this with paint.

Come check out the painting tonight at Conception III

“Lasya” is the creation dance performed by the Hindu god Shiva in his depiction as Natraj. The inspiration to meld Indian and Spanish dance came from my sister Behnaz, who is a dancer. She’s been performing Flamenco for many years now and some time ago she had explained to me how it had originated from Indian classical music and dance. I thought a many-armed flamenco dancer in the place of a Natraj would make a good image.

Lasya is one of my few “planned” paintings – the idea hit me when I was trying to come up with an appropriate subject for a rich red background that I had already laid down on canvas. The dancer is modeled after my sister based on a few performances that I’ve witnessed.

An explosion of light comes crackling through the branches as a trumpet Lilly heralds the dawning of a new age.  Below, crumbling idols are the vestiges of the old, and above, the trees’ vibrant greens are the fountains of the new.  Yet while the reason of the new age supersedes the superstition of the old, it is built on what came before.  Roots tread a fine line between absorbing age-old wisdom from the ancient rocks that they depend on for support, and breaking apart their decaying remnants.  The flower carries within it a potent symbol of the new age, its stamens poised to pollinate the world with the new science of medicine that has doubled lifespans within merely a handful of generations.

As with much of my work, the inspiration for this narrative didn’t emerge until very late in its evolution.  A forest scene emerged after a quick improvisation, and as I teased out some gnarly tree trunks, I felt that ancient temples were an appropriate addition to the scene.

The sky over the canopy started out orange, but it was too jarring for me, so it became a calmer blue.  The blue inspired the sunlight and the lens flare, and very soon a long green vine twisted its way out of the canopy and into the bell of a flower.

It wasn’t until I added the stamens, which turned to yellow pills, that the inspiration for the name and the theme of this piece struck me.  Maybe it was in my subconscious all along, but it didn’t fully materialize until the end.

In many ways the revolution of evidence-based medicine is the age of reason’s greatest accomplishment – underscored by the fact that if I’d lived in the era before it, I’d either be dead or very close to dying by this point in my life.