The Kiss

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…

Toccata is one of my earliest works, and also one of the largest canvases I have ever attempted. It was started and completed on a dreary winter Saturday in 1994 and hasn’t really been touched much since. While I love it conceptually, I’ve never been completely satisfied with the execution of it, and to be…

“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…

Here’s a painting seventeen years in the making! I stretched the canvas myself in 1995 and created what could only be described as a juvenile homage to Dali’s landscapes. It really was quite awful and I only saved it because it seemed like a waste to throw away such a massive canvas. In the early…

Since my grandmother passed away recently, my folks have been clearing out her old apartment and finding closets full of art supplies – pristine boxes of oil paints, bundles of brushes, and a number of rolls of canvas. There were also two stretched canvases – I decided to tackle one of them while I was…

In the summer between my junior and senior year at college I had the easiest job I’ve ever had. I was the “Gallery Guard” at the Wriston Art Center at Lawrence University in Appleton, WI. My responsibilities included using a handheld clicker to count the number of visitors, and making sure that nobody touched any…