Thousands of small marks, laid down one at a time, until a current of ink runs across the paper — and the flowers arrive, red and sudden.
Gold leaf and acrylic on canvas, 70 × 100 cm. The blue was mixed over four days to match the lapis of an old illuminated manuscript; the roses beneath were raised with modelling paste so they catch the light of the room they hang in.
Twelve pieces. Select any to see it larger.
Atefeh works in the space between patience and instinct. Every piece begins with a single dot on empty paper, then another, until thousands of marks have built a current across the page. Only then do the flowers arrive.
She draws on the vocabulary of Persian illumination — gold leaf, tessellated ornament, the disciplined repetition of tazhib — and lets it collide with the loose colour of botanical painting. Roses, camellias, koi, birds. Things that bloom and things that swim.
The painted river stones began as an accident — a handful of pebbles carried home from the water, painted one winter to pass the time. There are more than four hundred of them now.
Commissions, exhibitions and prints. Tell me the size of the wall and the light it gets — that is usually where a piece starts.
Isfahan, Iran