Roses are the protagonists in my paintings and they are the main inspiration for my work. For me, painting roses is the best way to express my own deep feelings about life. The impact of my paintings is determined by the tension between the figure’s physical presence and the spatial flatness of the setting, between realism and abstraction, between impression and expression.
The figures are forcefully defined and positioned three-dimensionally in a setting free of other details to achieve maximum impact with minimum effort.
I paint the roses from different angles, as if they might be engaged in a ceremonial ritual, demanding the viewer’s attention. The bright light gives colours an almost transparent quality, revealing their sensuality and allowing the petals to dance freely in the air. The background merges into a distribution of colour and the landscape is transformed into abstract patterns, with simplification of an artistic strategy creating a sense of majesty.
My paintings are ephemeral portrayals of the rose, whose short life is intertwined with mine.
What really concerns me above else is expression. Expression for me is not merely a question of passion that might be visible, it is the entirety of the painting of the figures with space around them, contributing to the whole. The tension may still remain unresolved in the same way as I imagine Monet might have felt about his paintings of water lilies.
Of Persian heritage, Parastoo Ganjei comes from an artistic family, with a grandfather who was a prominent painter in Iran. Parastoo studied fine art in Iran, Sussex and Dorset and now exhibits widely around the UK.
