First of all, the subtitle is an untruth: we can see only ourselves in the mirror. But Women of Note as an ongoing project was inspired both by women who have fascinated me and who have a place in history, and by the need I feel for these women’s likenesses to be portrayed as well as I can manage. I started this project in 2015. The portraits are postcard-sized, rendered on Khadi handmade paper. The colors are mostly very flat matte vinyl paint and the marks are Bic pen. I try to keep the image relatively simple and graphic. Yet, drawing a portrait, even from a photograph, is a very intimate activity. With the colors and drawing I try to feel-into what I understand or imagine of the woman's personality. The portraits also inevitably carry a flavor of my personal feelings about her.
October, 2022: WOMAN, LIFE, FREEDOM آزادی زندگی زن
I will be drawing courageous Iranian women in support of their heroic efforts, and honoring women whose freedom has been taken for speaking truth, and those whose lives have been taken because of they stood up to vicious repression. Many in my country care about them, but the names of these women do not easily arise out of the news in our troubled world. So, see their names, say their names and repeat their names to others who need to hear. In the US, we need to support Iranian women, and all women, everywhere, including our sisters of childbearing age in the US who are grievously endangered by the reckless and hypocritical pursuit of the dangerously narrow aims of religious fundamentalists, who are prepared to sacrifice our democracy for the sake of imposing their will on all others. President Biden has warned about the rise of fascism in the US. We need to stand in solidarity with all who fight repressive regimes, everywhere. Please go to the Woman Life Freedom page for portraits, stories and information about the powerful, ongoing Iranian protests spurred by the horrific injustice of the murder of Mahsa Amini by the Morality Police in September 2022.
Gallery 1 - Most Recent (2023-2021)
Gallery 2 - 2021-2017
Gallery 3 - 2017-2016
Gallery 4 - 2016-2015
