Artist's Biography

Shirin was born in Iran into an artistic family where painting, poetry and Persian literature were a major part of life. Inspired by her uncle, she started oil painting in her early teenage years.  At the age of seventeen, she produced her first illustrations for two children books in addition to illustrating stories in a children’s magazine. After immigrating to the United States, she received her Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master's degree in Fine Art in 2009 from Laguna College of Art & Design.   

Shirin has always been a seeker and a student of Eastern and Western mystical teaching and mythology, and this have influenced her art tremendously. She is fascinated by the metaphysical, the magical and the mystical.   Through her paintings, she is depicting the cosmic dance of the unconscious and consciousness, the seen and unseen, as they play hand in hand to create reality. 

The painting “Sophia” was brought to life through her curiosity as she was captivated by the concept of a divine feminine force playing a role in the creation of the universe, just as life begins in the womb of a woman. Sophia is pure and serene; she is all love.  She is the embodiment of a soul experiencing herself through the human body. She tells the story of the fall and the rise of her being.  

Her painting “Trapped” is the adversary of Sophia; her dark side. The side that is trapped inside herself and her egos; a collection of her emotions, her sufferings and the stories of her life time.  the two paintings depict the struggle of human beings in their journey from “Trapped” to “Sophia, the divine”. 

She considers her paintings to be a connection between the real and the unreal, the seen and the unseen.  As a combination of the two, her recent paintings are mainly a depiction of a figure in an ethereal setting.  These days she continues to paint attempting to answer more of philosophical internal questions by painting the external reality, as it is in fact a result of this internal quest.