Artist Spotlight: Sam Nejati
EXCERPT //
Sam Nejati’s studio in North Philadelphia has a single window bringing light into the whitewashed room. Everywhere, on tables, on walls, are representations of the pomegranate fruits that are so central to culture in his native Iran. He’s talking about the sky, and the color palette shift that came along with his move to Philadelphia from California a year ago with his wife. Nejati’s darker West Coast blues have given way to low contrast shades of East Coast turquoise that engulf his soul-baring trees, birds, and ocean views in a gauzy, meditative calm that invites long-looking. As if it has heard him, one of the older paintings jumps off the wall, and thumps to the ground like fallen fruit.
As he talks about the sky and trees, he muses on an Iranian proverb: The more fruitful the tree, the more it will bend. This recognition that abundance should come with humility fits Nejati well, and to him, it means: “The more one knows, the wiser one becomes, therefore one deals with the world in all humbleness.”
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