Leila Ghandehari – Anniversary Art Exhibition – Artist Portfolio Magazine

Artist Portfolio Magazine –

Leila Ghandehari – Dus Dus, Sydney, Australia –

I have always enjoyed Art from early age, I can remember spending most of my childhood just painting and designing everything, as an Iranian girl with too much limitation in our society, Art has always been a massive part of my life and this was a world that I felt freedom.
My journey though art is following the path that is never ending, you will find yourself that always discovering new things, getting excited and inspired by very ordinary things and how becoming fabulous things by your imagination.

I have always been fascinated and inspired by natural world to express myself and show my personality. Thus I joined art classes to learn artistic skills when I was 13 years old. When I started studying Biology at University, it provided me with an opportunity to scientifically learn about nature as my inspiring source .Combination of art and studying Biology helped me express and create freely what I imagined

During the ages between art and human behaviour, from rock art by primitives to modern art, the symptoms and reactions of humans on the face of nature over time have been so stunning and this was the other reason for me to interest in Art.
I found out that art is like a mystery and to decode it, scrutiny and analysis are required. Changing from ideas or concepts to physical entities on artworks makes me feel a great satisfaction especially when I discover an underlying theme through my journey from nature to art.

I have always been eager to work within the Art and Design industry, I strongly believe that my artistic skills provide me with powerful tools to depict inspiring and exciting ideas in terms of creation of artworks. For instance, one of my careers while joining UN projects with the name of Art for Conservation was supporting the women’s handcrafts of local communities. For this purpose I tried to make some artworks inspired by indigenous arts for example making some bags with pictures of local arts and introduced them to the market.

Personally I think , travelling is one of the most important inspiring sources for any artist and for this purpose I have been travelling since I was 18 years old as a traveller or a tour leader for better understanding Iranian motifs on various handcrafts .Since that time I have been trying to create some pieces of artworks by combination of the locally Iranian arts and artistic ideas originated from other countries such as American Indians, Aboriginals and during this period of work I have been facing some similarities which are really exciting and always motivating.

During that period, one of my interests was how creating artworks helped conserve our environment and therefore this idea led me to participate in Green Campaign. Hence it provided me with an opportunity to perfume some artistic works such as designing and making bags from cloth to encourage people Not to use plastic bag while shopping, using some artistic materials which have harmless for the environment, drawing Iranian endangered animals on the T-shirts to raise public awareness and creating marvellous items like glasses, earrings, cloths, shoes by using old materials. Actually art and design is my whole life.

Activities:
Painting exhibition at Arasbaran Art Complex (Iran) 27 Apr to 8 May 2013
Group Exhibition at Gateway Gallery (Melbourne) June 2007
Group exhibition Mirak Galley (Iran) 21 May 21 to 26.2005
Participation in side exhibition of second Visual Arts (Iran) Feb 2005
Member of Visual Art Society (Iran) May 2004 to 2007
Commendation Plate in the Fourth Festival of Plastic Arts (Iran) Feb 2004
Certificate of Technical & Vocational Skill in painting (Iran) Mar 2004
Commendation Plate of first festival in Nature (Iran) May 2002
Participation in Third Biannual Festival of Plastic Art for Youth (Iran) Nov 2002
Beginning the art class at Espahbodi art center part time (Iran) Mar 1990 to 2004