NAME: pantea rahmani
BIRTH PLACE: Tehran
BIRTH DATE: 9.10.71
BIOGRAPHY
I was seven or eight years old when I drew two almost life size profiles of my parents in pen in my school notebook. The drawings brought me a strange feeling I had never experienced before. At that time and even many years later I did not know exactly what art was all about and I was just curious about the similarity between the painting and the painted object. It had never occurred to me that there is a possibility of pursuing a career in art, and I was told that art could be a hobby and a part of life not the whole life itself.
Long after that, I finally managed to attend drawing classes and started learning the essential skills of my work. This changed almost every aspect of my life. I became absorbed by challenges; both within myself, as well as the outside world.
At that time, I was very much into making self-portraits with different mediums. I tried to learn how to use and control the various tools I needed in order to realize my ideas on the canvas.
The theme of self-portrait stayed with me for a long time; maybe because I was always alone since I was a kid; and maybe because my own self was the only thing I could so intimately comfortably delve into.
First, I was taken with the torso, and then, by the complete life size human figure. I stayed mainly as my own model. The background of the figures changed slowly from colour pencil hatched surfaces to an entirely titanium white background of raised fingerprint-like texture.
It seems to me that my subjects are things that I have been previously ignorant of. When I work on them for the first time, the fear of an unknown chaotic stream always invades me. I try to face the fear and go beyond it, so I can form the frightening chaos within me, into a kind of personal order through introspection. My work is about me, myself and my surroundings
