Today we’d like to introduce you to Abol Bahadori

Hi Abol, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I am a mixed-media colorist artist working in Studio 5 at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, Alexandria, VA. My background and training have played a significant role in becoming a colorist painter with a strong desire to try all sorts of media. I was born in Tabriz, the capital city of Iranian Azerbaijan. Tabriz is an ancient Silk Road hub—the city of carpets and mosaics and the cradle of Persian miniatures, which I studied at a very young age. I also learned how to live a cosmopolitan life and absorb the art of many cultures as a child since my family moved to France for a while for my parent’s further education. After I finished high school in Tabriz, I moved to England. I did my Bachelor’s in Fine Arts and Textiles and Master’s in Digital Application Design for Textiles at The University of Manchester, UK. I moved and settled in the Washington DC area in the ’90s and started training with the founders of Washington Color School. This training has also influenced my creative development, particularly in my use of color and its emotional impact.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Becoming a full-time artist has been a fairly smooth road for me. I’ve been lucky to choose creative subjects and industries for my education and income earlier on, and the universe has paved the way through so many unexpected incidents. However, doing what I love while earning a living has been a challenge to a certain extent, as is for any startup, especially in the visual arts field. I relied on my graphic design and art directing skills to support myself and my artistic development. I have to admit that my graphic design skills have also helped develop my more recent series. So, it has been an organic process with some decision-making challenges and problem-solving, but that is exactly what art is all about. Isn’t it?

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I constantly seek a new way of seeing or sensing. We view the world using our eyes, which have a limited color spectrum and depth of vision. But what if we had compound eyes like insects, sonar capabilities like dolphins, or even used smell and other senses to receive our vision? I am an artist interested in the void between the known and the unknown.

For me, art is a doorway to the subconscious, and color is the key. My artistic process is a spiritual journey through the colors that occur to my eyes as composers would hear the notes in their ears. The process is spontaneous. It happens outside of the realm of self and intellect. Forms come in to represent the colors.

More than an artist, I consider myself a medium that provides the observer (including myself) with access to the unknown or the forgotten. My art is successful only when each viewer sees their own story in it and makes a deeper connection to the self and the universe through it. Listening to what others see in my paintings, I am continually surprised by our shared collective memory.

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
One of my favorite plays as a child was role-playing/acting in a self-made theater. That is a good memory, and I also organized my colored pencils in a gradual rainbow sequence: Magenta, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Teal, Blue, and Purple. I have a distinct visual memory of that.