As far as I remember, I've been interested in painting, you know, all my life.
You know, the medium, it's very unpredictable.
To me, that's the beauty of it.
When you start a watercolor painting, it's kind of hard to visualize what the outcome
is going to look like.
My name is Kimi Akastrei.
The way that I started working with watercolor was very expressive.
For me, it was a way of communication.
I started working with a very well-known Iranian painter named Hoja Chakibah.
I used to go to his studio at least once a week for about seven years.
I got a really unique introduction to painting, and I got to experiment with a lot of things
at his studio.
And that was a really, to this day, I feel like a lot of the secrets and techniques that
I use are things that I've learned at his studio.
When I came to the US, I didn't really paint for a couple of years until I went to university.
That was when I was introduced to oil painting, and I loved it very much.
When I got into realism and photorealism.
Drawing or painting what's in front of me is about a lot of things.
Sometimes it's just about showing appreciation towards something.
It's about expressing what I feel with color.
I allow the work to tell me where to go, and I allow the subject to tell me where to go.
So when I think about the environment, what feel you're going for, because I don't plan
it, a lot of that has to do with what I think about right when I'm putting the brush on
the paper.
I use a lot of different mediums, and I pick different subjects, like I'm not a portrait
painter, or I'm not a still life painter, or a realistic painter, or an abstract painter.
I kind of like to experiment with everything.
Each subject and each medium teaches me something new, and it allows me to kind of play a different
game.
I really started enjoying painting when I realized that it really wasn't about me and
showing off my skills and what I wanted to say.
It became about work.
It became about that experience.
It became about working with the medium and creating something that just didn't exist
before I started doing that work.
Being able to witness the result of it was what gave me the ultimate joy of doing it.
It's what keeps me going.
Just do what you want to do.
Don't think about yourself too much.
Think about the work that you want to do.
I believe that if it's something that you can dream of, it's something that you can
do.
When I should lay my burden down, when I should lay my burden down, instead I cling him, heavy
it to my head, when I should lay my burden down, I ought to lay my name, I ought to lay
my name.
When I should lay my burden down, instead I cling him, heavy it to my head, when I should
lay my burden down, I ought to lay my name.
