Shara Banisadr

· Raised in Tehran-Iran in an artistic family of art collectors, musicians, painters, poets, and writers.

· An American-Iranian artist with a spirit of adventure, and a love of learning and challenge.

· Educational background in psychology (C.G Jung) with an emphasis on the mythic dimension of human experience, including philosophy, Sophism, and mythology. Fine Art study in painting and metal sculpture.Graphic Design & Interior Decorating

Art is the language of Spirit. I believe that we are Spirits having a human experience. Because Spirit never dies, you can always have conversations with an artist through their art. When I created my jazz collection, I was simply having conversations with the Spirits of musicians. Like poets and writers, as an artist I participate in the physical labor of creation. To me music is the extension of a universal language that influences my life and painting.

As a Modern artist, I have the privilege to be free to express myself through my media, and share it with others. Some of my college and friends criticized me for my different style of works and they think that I am confusing people.

I see myself more as experimental artist who love to play with different kind of media. In my work I experiment with drawing on canvases to creating metal sculpture by welding different peace of metal to each other .…..or pouring ink on paper and using stick instead of brush…… As I study Masters, I see how much they played until they came up with new style.

My teacher is Picasso I don't paint his way but surly I learn from him how to create spontaneously and not be afraid of what critic say. If you know exactly what you are going to do" says Picasso, "what's the good of doing it? there's no interest in something you know already. It's much better to do something else." I never trace the path of each choice or justify every point of my composition to me the end result is enough which is to: Transferring life into my canvases.

I see my artistic life as just one long investigation of things and my reaction to them. Jazz painting was reaction to my love of music specially jazz, and quotations from my favorite artist, Kandnansky. As a painter and musician his vocabulary was very interesting. He said in one of his essays:

"………..Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings, the artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another to cause vibrations in the soul."

For me the question was, "How does one create vibrations in the soul?" The early Jazz artists created art on spot. They played their way, and it was a new and original form of music. Because their music was so new and different, there was no right or wrong way of playing. Jazz musicians shared their humanity with their audiences. Their stories are universal; they don't belong to a certain color or nationality, instead they belong to humanity. I wanted to emulate that originality and creativity. I watched every video I could get my hands on about jazz and listened to music at every opportunity. At the same time, I started an in-depth investigation into the media I needed to use to get me where I wanted to be, which was connected to the Spirit of original artists. I began an interesting study on the effect of different kinds of simple lines.

I remembered Klee (19 century painter……….) who said, "Let's take a line for walk." I am not sure if I took that line for a walk, but we certainly went for a wild journey! And for most of the time line was way ahead of me as play is the center of my creation.

I knew from my art education that I have to use line techniques to be able to create energy in my paintings. I also had to deal with color. What are the colors of jazz? I had to change my media from oil to acrylic, as oil painting would take long time for the drawing period and I would not be able to keep the same feeling for that long period of time. I wanted to be able to capture the essence of transformation, when the music reaches my soul, reflects into my body, moves from my hand to brush and then to canvas. My goal was to mirror what just happened, and my canvas turned to my mirror. It turned into a mirror that reflected the effect of music on my psyche. In essence, my psyche became the womb of creation expressed on canvas. In other words, I was not interested in just painting musicians playing: I just wanted to be channel for them.

My next step was to listen to music, and to paint without any prefixed conception. In the same way jazz musicians created their music without rules or without anyone's path to walk in, I needed to trust my inner wisdom and listen to the whispered voice to take the next step. As I got the hang of it and solved some technical problems, I had a lot of fun playing. The mode of my painting would change not by my choice, but by the music I was listening to.

When I look at my paintings, I can see how the mode of my painting changed with different musicians. Louis Armstrong always welcomed me to my studio with open heart ("Hello Dolly"), Little Jr. Parker stood by me when I was tired ("Stand By Me") And more than anything, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday's music were the strongest vibrations to come through in my art. They are so many different way of meditating or praying. Expressing my soul as an artist is my way.

Lesson to the doctor of soul , Rumi (a thirteenth century Mystic and poet)

" If you have lost heart in the path of love, flee to me without delay. Never be without love, or you will be dead. Die with love and remain alive"

This is my path. What is yours?