“When I paint, everything disappears. I enter the canvas, become the paint.”
Process
Hashemi peers through a mirror to see echoes of infinite mysteries reflected back, as allegories in caves, as retinal rods and cones, as refracted light, as the sun’s rays extending toward earth. All there is, is art; in nature, in human relations, in concepts, in everything. Art is humanity’s only hope for the future. Through art, civilizations have prospered and collapsed, paradigm shifts have been introduced and engrained in the collective mind, time and time again. And so, as it was, it shall be. We look to art for nourishment of the soul, comfort in the affirmation that ‘we are’. Where there is art, there is spirit and light.
When Hashemi paints, everything else disappears. She enters the canvas, becomes the paint, she feels the texture, smells the primer, hears the brush. All senses engaged, little is left between her and the painting.
To her, painting is the music rain makes. A good painting just sounds good. It is physics of light, air and paint vibrating off each other in pleasing patterns. As a fractal, a painting is a zooming in and out of an idea, a colour, a visceral reaction to what we see. It is a feeling that moves us, that resonates with a deep part of our inner core. The high art of poetics, Ferrari believes, is emotion conveyed and received via external stimulus: painting is music, theatre, dance and poetry.
Hashemi has spent the last 20 years unlearning everything in order to paint with more heart. She reveals: “I don’t know why I paint. I just do. I paint fast, I paint slow, I paint delicately, I paint messily. I just paint.”