Let's Play Oil Painting

This oil painting explores a surreal figurative scene shaped by play, imagination, and symbolic ambiguity

 about this oil painting

This painting explores a surreal and playful visual narrative within a staged figurative composition. Two youthful figures are presented in a scene that blends innocence with unexpected symbolic elements. Their interaction suggests a space between imagination, performance, and altered reality. 

Familiar references are subtly reworked, creating a tension between recognition and distortion. The composition draws on dreamlike and fairy-tale atmospheres, where logic feels gently suspended. Surrounding elements introduce a sense of organic growth and visual strangeness within the scene.

There is a deliberate contrast between playful gestures and an underlying sense of ambiguity. The work moves between humour, curiosity, and subtle dissonance. It invites open interpretation, allowing meaning to shift depending on the viewer’s perspective. The painting sits within a contemporary figurative practice that explores narrative, symbolism, and perception.

about the artist

Alemeh Bagherian is an Iranian contemporary painter whose practice explores femininity, memory, and cultural identity through richly layered visual narratives.

Her work draws from Persian visual traditions, including miniature aesthetics and carpet design, where ornament, storytelling, and structure naturally converge. These influences appear in her paintings as intricate compositions where figuration and symbolism coexist within dense, emotionally charged spaces.

She holds an MA in Painting and a BA in Carpet Design, and is a member of the Society of Iranian Painters. Her background in textile and pattern-based design continues to inform the structural rhythm of her pictorial language.

Across her practice, Bagherian engages with themes of inner experience, psychological presence, and cultural memory, often referencing Persian literary and mythological sources such as the Shahnameh.

Her work has been exhibited widely in Iran and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Seyhoun Art Gallery in Tehran, as well as presentations in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. Selected exhibitions include Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago and Asia House in London.

Working between figuration and symbolic abstraction, her paintings create immersive visual environments where narrative, ornament, and emotion are held in constant balance.

collection

View Alemeh Bagherian's Dubai collection of available paintings here

copyright

This oil painting is one of a kind original therefore, all copyrights & reproduction rights are reserved by the artist