Helen Zarin

Zarin – The name instinctively provokes the imagination with the mystery of antiquity, of an illustrious bygone age.
Zarin’s paintings engage her viewers and command their attention. The swaths of bold colors tempestuously sweeping across each canvas coalesce in the finality of her ultimate brush strokes creating a work of compelling sophistication.
Zarin hails from the ancient metropolis of Shiraz, Persia, which is home to poets, writers, architects, gardens, world famous pistachios, and the internationally acclaimed Shiraz red wine grape, which has been transplanted into the world’s most famous vineyards. Zarin’s varied influences of her native land inspire canvases with a cacophony of color, but with a distinct focus in mind. It is a difficult and fine line to walk delving into impressionistic and abstract elements flavored with intellectual concepts of music, dance, literature, history, landscapes, and interiors. Zarin fearlessly treads into these realms without trepidation and exults in the struggle.
Emotional concepts of love, intimacy, joy, angst, detachment, solitude, and indifference all exist on Zarin’s palette that she masterfully pours onto her canvases. The viewer is left intellectually and emotionally drained with this confrontation.
Growing up as an Orthodox Jew in a Muslim land presents its own set of challenges to Zarin. Muslim Koranic morality bans alcohol in all its forms as “haram” (evil, sin). Just as the revered centuries old Shiraz grape stands in opposition to the prevailing culture in its venerable, unchanged, primordial state, Zarin emulates its tenacity and conviction to exist and prosper. Both have survived the cultural conflict in Shiraz to be, to blossom, to advance. Both are a testament to the enduring transcendence of distinction.
Zarin shares her novel artistic vision to the world despite all odds.