"Bringing the Museum to You"

By permission of the artist, The Cyber Art Show is pleased to feature the second of two 12-piece Exhibitions of works by Iranian/British contemporary Impressionist Parastoo Ganjei (born 1952).

 

Parastoo studied graphic design in Iran in the 1970's. Her grandfather, the Russian-trained and widely admired Abbas Rassam Arjangi, was a pioneer in bringing academic European techniques to Iranian art. Parastoo has incoporated many of his influences into her beautiful still life work, with subtle rich colours and deft brushwork. 

Parastoo moved to the UK to study graphics and animation at Croydon and Bournemouth Art Colleges.  She now lives in the heart of rural Wiltshire. She used to live in London for a long time, a very large and busy city. She moved to a much smaller seaside city on the south coast of the country where she had her first garden, where the breeze and the noisy seagulls were the constant reminders of living near the sea. When she moved to the country, she felt as if she had awakened from a very long and deep sleep. Living so close to nature showed her that the flights of her imagination weren’t limited to scenes around her backyard. Today she can zoom into galactic distances to create a new world.

 

Parastoo is a painter who loves to paint passing impressions and make them last forever.

 

Artist Statement:

 

“I paint my immediate surroundings and no matter how faithfully I render, it will not carry the power to convince if my painting is not presenting a fertile imagination. My remembered, or rather invented, landscapes are more alive than paintings I used to do on the spot. Now I think it is not trustworthiness to the scenery before me that presents the sense of reality; it is my inner apprehension and my feelings which give life to my paintings. I want my painting to convey my sense of gratitude and love for life.”

 

Many of her original paintings are kept in private collections around the world. Her work has been published as greeting cards, prints and posters by various publishers. Some of  Parastoo's paintings can be seen at the Lime tree Gallery in Bristol, Highgate Contemporary Art Gallery in London and Arundel Art Room in West Sussex.