Untitled 1992

Mostafa Dashti created this ‘Untitled’ painting with what seems to be thin layers of diluted blue oil paint, brushed and scrubbed into the canvas. Imagine Dashti standing in front of the canvas, lost in thought, trying to capture the essence of a distant landscape or seascape. Perhaps he thinned the paint to achieve that sense of atmospheric perspective, trying to express the subtleties of light and shadow. The brushstrokes are loose and gestural, particularly in the upper reaches of the painting, they evoke a mood of melancholy and introspection. Note how the horizontal bands of darker blues create a sense of depth and recession, pulling you into the pictorial space. There’s something so moving about these quiet, contemplative paintings. They remind me of Agnes Martin’s subtle, meditative canvases. We painters are all in dialogue with one another, whether we know it or not, learning from each other's experiments and pushing the boundaries of what painting can be.