Full Name: Refah Reghabi

Born: 1968 Tehran, Iran - Lives and works in Montreal, Canada

Education:

1992 BSc. Science, Shahid Beheshti University.
2000 MBA, Industrial Management Institute.
2003 Starting Art Activity.
2009 Master of Fine Arts degree (Painting).
My artistic activity began on the year 2003 under the training of a well-known Iranian artist Mr. Ahmad Vakili .
I composed my master's degree porject under the supervision and guidance of fine arts educator Ms. Simin Keramati .

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

My artwork is figurative paintings with a realistic base. The female figures possess a firm, solid, beautiful and serene feature just like the sublime paintings. The figure has come from the heart of art history to our present time, in order to blend the life experiences of today with the ones of yesterday. I have removed their erotic aspects, although they have retained their femininity and the female characteristics and beauties. My figures are hardly fitted in the frame. The nude women who parallel to tranquility and dignity, cry out the fatigue, pain, and the inner feeling of being ignored. This is the second half, the other , who is always The second sex .

In my paintings I have mostly used the oppositeness, darkness and light contrasts. My figures are formed in this oppositeness as if they are stuck in a limbo, searching for a way to light.

The works start with brush strokes and expressive colors, and a kind of offhand, out of the order impression is seen in them which convey my mental concepts. The figures are suffered bodies full of wounds and pain. I take the nudeness of the figures as a symbol of the defenselessness of women.

Sometimes my figures disappear in the space at the end. To disappear is to be ignored in social situations; which is not any different in the east than the west.

The figures are normally not positioned in the front layers, that is why they do not seem realistic and somehow suspend in the border between abstraction and reality. This suspension is very clear in today’s social situations of women.


The «Goddesses « series



‏I, on the verge of middle age,have experienced the ups and downs of life , no more and no less, and have found the goddesses inside me and in other women ,they ought to realize them too.
‏All I want is to paint the power and joy of the goddess, not the pain and suffering.
‏My goddesses, while naked in nature, do not allow a lustful look. Though, they do not turn a blind eye to the pleasure of intimacy. They perceive life creatively, joyously, and sensationally. Ergo, I have made a paradise out of life without the blessing of decease .
Out of this life/Out of life on earth/ this world Without waiting on the promises of afterlife/ without having to wait on the promised blessings of afterlife.