Selfscape

After living more than 16 years in Adelaide, in October 2010 I moved to Boolarra, a small town in Victoria. Boolarra 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 fascination for 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 reflection, I realised that these landscapes are in fact my self portraits. “Selfscape” is a synthesis of these series of work - a combination of landscape and self portrait.
Abbas Mehran