I didn’t know how long it would take to get used to the Australian landscape.

It was just so flat! I was used to being surrounded by mountains and having monuments from which I could find inspiration. There was nothing like that here. But over the years Australia has become a huge source of inspiration for my art.

My husband, daughter and myself came to Australia to have a better quality of life. I thought we may stay here for one or two years, but we have lived here ever since. I had worried that we had moved to the wrong country, but that changed over time. I gradually started learning things about Melbourne and Australia, and my little girl started to fall in love with the place. We grew to like it, and now when we travel back to Italy I cannot wait to get back.

Fortunately for me, my husband and daughter share my love of art.

He works as an architect, and also loves to create art. My daughter, who we brought here when she was seven, is also a talented artist and works as an architect. She is the proudest achievement in my life. She uses things I taught her, but has turned them into her own unique practice.

In my family, art was always a big part of our lives. Given that my father is an architect and artist, and my mother is also an artist, I guess it was in my blood. Art has always been a part of me. I couldn’t think of anything else growing up. I didn’t play much with other kids, as I was always drawing with pencils on pieces of paper. Nothing else interested me. I finally realised after a while that maybe everyone wasn’t the same as me – that there existed other interests than art.

Although I was born in Iran, my whole family moved to Italy when I was seven, where I completed my schooling.

We lived back in Iran while I attended art school, but we couldn’t stay there any longer because we missed living in Italy too much. We started in Genova then moved to Bologna where I finished my diploma at the Fine Arts Academy of Bologna. I had the most fantastic teachers, who all become very famous in their own right.

After I finished school I won a special prize for religious art which led to receiving church commissions. I was able to hold exhibitions because of these commissions, and the works started to sell for huge prices. I think I was so deeply drawn to religion for inspiration because I was surrounded by it for so long. I read a lot of religious writing, and loved painting the image of Angelico. I am influenced by renaissance and surrealist artists like Salvador Dali, who continue to inspire me to create art from the images in my head.  My work is traditional in some ways, but strange in others. I put my subjects in an unexpected context which changes the whole feel of the pieces.

The blessing and curse of living in Australia is that it’s easier to make a living teaching art than selling your artistic work.

In Italy, it was easier to sell art – there were higher and more consistent sales. I was fortunate that because I had a fine arts background all I needed to teach art was a diploma of education to begin teaching my art skills. What I found though was that I learnt just as much from my students as they did from me.

Teaching is so very rewarding. I have different kinds of students – younger ones just want to create a portfolio for university, contemporary and modern artists, and older people with experience. Each individual asks questions that I have to answer. To give them the correct ways of making art, I need to add to my own knowledge. It has made me so much more confident in my own work. I even find mistakes in my older work as I teach.

I have also learnt to study the landscape in a different way over time.

My use of colour is ever-changing because of the new colour discoveries I make. There are so many beautiful colours to recreate. My artistic process is also constantly evolving. Trying to paint trees was so hard. I didn’t like gum trees at all. My trees always looked so European! I now have a better understanding of the trees, the bark, the colours and the little details. Finding a piece of bark on the ground can create a whole new piece of art.

Knowledge of anatomy is still used in my life drawing, but now I am better at using what’s around me. The sky is always changing – whether it’s the colours or the reflection on the sea. I like to mix it all together in an abstract fashion. I now see Australia in a different way, and use my art to represent that change.

from on .