ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Nothing is absolute for me.

No painting stays as it was when started. Drawing and paintings are the most difficult thing for an artist. You start them but they direct you to where they should go.

I want to fit many things into my work as if it is the last day and the last world and all should be expressed here and now – but each work/painting guides me differently. The work is the final judge that reveals the real me and my emotions. My studio is like a battleground and I walk in there only when I know that I am ready. This might not happen for weeks at a time.

Sometimes a work sits in my studio for years while I am working on other projects. They change all the time until I get there and once this feeling comes out I allow different elements like humans, plants, animals, letters, memories, happiness, love, religion, politics, nostalgia, delusion, poetry and music – all things that encompass human beings on a daily basis. I live in Tehran, a huge city with all the contrasts, contradictions and characteristics of a large metropolis. I am not a child of war, I am the war itself. My works do not come from war – you see the war in my work. It is an internal war. LOOK CLOSER – you will see it all there. I am the narrator and am illustrating what I have witnessed while growing up in this land. My works are not modern or post-modern. They are a comic vision of my Tehran and my life as I see it here.

Amir Farhad