I became interested in painting in 1972. I was in a small bookshop in the city of Sanandaj in Iran, browsing shelves to buy a book. A young lad referried to the book in my hand, “Lust for Life”, and said: ” if you read this book, it will change your life”. Becoming curious, I bought and read the book. Indeed, it influenced me intensely, sparked curiosity, and planted a seed of change in my subconscious mind.

My passionate initial experimentation with oil paint generated such an excitement that I could not stop painting for days, resulting in several pleasing unfinished paintings. The excitement resulted from this experimentation was enough to instigate a drastic turning point in my life. However, due to my personal and family circumstances, it took twenty years until I could fully get involved with the art of painting, and let the seed of change to fully blossom. In 1992, while residing and working in Miami Florida, I decided to seriously study and practice visual arts. At the time, I had a Bachelor Degree in Management and was a Certified Internal Auditor, and had twenty years of work experience. In 1993, I undertook painting courses at the Florida International University. In the same year, I migrated to Adelaide, where I took up university studies and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) at the University of South Australia. Since my graduation, I have exhibited my work throughout Australia, and recently, in China, Taiwan, Germany, and Iran, holding 15 solo and more than 40 group exhibitions.

Primarily, my work, with a strong connection with the Iranian heritage, has become my major medium of expression, and my experiences of other cultures have diversified and complicated my sense of identity and my work’s content and style.
After living more than 16 years in Adelaide, in October 2010 I moved to Boolarra, a small town in Victoria. Boolarra, with a population of about 600, is surrounded with wonderful natural beauty: farms, hills, creeks, and lakes. When I was leaving Iran in 1979, I could not imagine that one day, after living in Buenos Aires, Miami, Adelaide, I would settle in such a place, where, for the first time, I could call it my home.
Since my arrival into my new home, I have become fascinated by the beauty, wealth and diversity of its landscapes. I have not been able to resist my desire to tackle a series of landscape paintings. Interestingly, my sudden interest in landscape painting quickly led to an exciting and challenging experimental initiative, where the imageries from my Iranian cultural heritage kept interfering and wanting to intermix within the painted natural sceneries. This resulted in an exhilarating creative endeavour, by which new landscapes are being created from two apparently incompatible visual art disciplines. Upon reflecting on my new work, I realised that these landscapes are in fact my own self portraits.

Abbas Mehran