Imagine you are seated inside a spacecraft that has been drifting aimlessly through space for years. Then one day, without warning, a radiant shimmer of multicoloured light streams through the window and settles gently upon your face. Startled, you rush toward the window and gaze outside in awe—only to realize that you have entered an entirely new world.
A world of exploding light, of glass, ice, and pearl.
A world of silence and profound horizons.
A crystalline world where flowers are human, and humans are absent.
This is my experience of gazing at the paintings of Iran Darroudi.
Some artists paint what they see; others paint what they feel. Darroudi, in my view, first sees what she feels—and only then paints it. Perhaps this is because the distance between the artist and the art is so small… sometimes nonexistent.
Even if you strip away certain imposed elements—like overt displays of patriotism, hints of Eastern mysticism, or the poetic titles—you are still left with an entire universe of pure feeling.
Yet, she herself seems to mistakenly attribute her recognition to external influences. For instance, the poem Ahmad Shamlou wrote as the introduction to her first collection—aside from the single line, “We did not ask you to depict it”—does little, in my opinion, but diminish the spirit of modern poetry.
Bride of Memory, by Iran Darroudi
Cold, by Iran Darroudi
I often find myself thinking: if one day I were fortunate enough to own a piece of Darroudi’s work, I would hang it somewhere beyond my room, on a vast wall. A place where, when all the lights are turned off and the city falls silent, the moonlight could fall upon it—bringing it to life—while I drift to sleep, gazing at it.
Perhaps then, I too would enter that world of exploding light, glass, ice, and pearl.
