I was born in Saqqez in late 1987, but at the age of four we soon left my hometown. Due to my father’s job, we lived for several years in Bijar and later in Urmia, until I eventually moved to Tehran to pursue a bachelor’s degree in painting. I had loved painting since childhood, alongside many other things such as mathematics, writing, and literature. Yet among them, the power of imagery proved strongest, gradually becoming the center of my interests. I studied graphic design in high school, then painting and later illustration at university. But what shaped my current artistic practice did not take place at the university—it emerged during a training program at the Shen Atelier, called The Course on Representing Nature. As a child, I was deeply drawn to depicting people and the spaces around me, and it was through this course that I came to a clearer understanding of the reasons behind this fascination. My first solo exhibition, Threshold, was held in Shiraz in 2017 and, with some changes, later in Tehran in 2018. My most recent solo show, Nineteen Nights, took place in 2020 at Inja Gallery. So far, I have participated in more than forty group exhibitions in Iran and abroad. I have now been living in Muscat for four years, and as I approach the end of my thirties, I have realized that painting—and more broadly, art—is not a choice for me, but a necessity.