Today we’d like to introduce you to Golareh Safarian.
Hi Golareh, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Back in 2018, I had the pleasure of being featured by Voyage LA in a piece entitled “Art & Life with Golareh Safarian“. In that article, I shared with you my connection to art and how I came to dedicate my life to it. Today, I’d like to pick things up where I left off. Art continues to be the fuel that drives me on a daily basis. I continue to see it as the most honest and revealing method of communication, and a way to connect with people from all cultures and backgrounds. What has changed since 2018 is my relentless desire to incorporate art into more aspects of my life. I am now fully committed to living a creative life because I know that my happiness is directly correlated to such a living.
Like everyone who endured the trials and tribulations of the COVID-19 pandemic era where social isolation became the new norm and notions of reality shifted at a societal level, I looked for ways to cope with the new mask-wearing, safety is 6-feet-apart normal. Art was my lifeline. I poured all my fear, uncertainty, and existential anxiety into it. As a result, I experienced a creative explosion, producing more than 110 new art pieces since 2019. I was also not shy about trying all sorts of mediums. My new pieces ranged from oil and acrylic on canvas, to digital paintings, to abstract photography, to animations and motion graphics, to video art.
I also began to adapt to new technology and incorporated new tools and methods in my art process. I joined Voice.com NFT marketplace in late 2021 where I could offer many of my new collections, namely “Playing with Perspective”; “Abstract in The Metaverse”; “Digital Expressionism”; “Gothic Metaverse”; “Fluid Forms”; “An Enchanted Garden In The Metaverse”; “Guardians of The Metaverse”, and others as NFT art.
One of the most healing applications of art during the pandemic era for me was its incorporation into my mindfulness and meditation regiment. I had launched The Healing Salon, an online meditation center, in December of 2018, and so I started to create visual mindfulness and meditation videos that I distributed via The Healing Salon’s YouTube Channel with the goal of using visual imagery and art to help manage stress and anxiety.
In my other company, MindTripz Inc., a media agency with a focus on content creation and social media, art became the distinguishing factor, setting us apart from other content agencies. As its creative director, I started to offer a unique creative touch to my client’s campaigns, providing top-tier, high-end marketing aesthetics at affordable budgets to mid-level and start-up companies. This gave them the ability to create visually engaging campaigns using artistic approaches to video content with the inclusion of graphic design, motion graphics, character design, photography, animation, dynamic video editing, and creative copywriting. The result was not only the creation of visually arresting, results-driven marketing campaigns but an elevation in my personal commitment to living a creative life, both professionally and personally.
More recently, I have started to experiment with AI art and use it to evolve my personal artistic journey. Now, I know that AI art is a highly controversial topic these days, and many artists would like to see it banned. I, however, am not one of those artists. I have never condoned creative gatekeeping, and while I understand the concern of copyright infringement in how the AI learns art, I believe there are many ways to use AI art without such copyright infringements or concerns and employ it as a tool to explore new artistic paths and evolve one’s own creative expressions. To that end, I have created a new NFT collection now available on Objkt called “AI & I”. In this collection, I use my own abstract oil on canvas pieces as the basis to create variations using AI via Midjourney. All the pieces showcase the aggressive impasto brushstrokes and textures that are predominant in my fine art oil pieces – further enhanced by thick paint and liquid ink brushwork via Corel Painter.
They are also enhanced via AI with prompts that explore the emotional landscape of the human psyche during the age of The Machine. My goal with this collection is to expand beyond the stereotypical views of AI art as mere recreations of preexisting works by developing my own modern, contemporary art pieces that are evolutions of my personal creative journey. Currently, there are five pieces in my “AI & I” NFT collection, with more coming soon – all of which aim to offer an emotional, artistic experience rich with elements of abstract expressionism, fine art, pop art, poster art, and AI art, contributing to what I believe can be a new and innovative art medium.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
An artist’s journey is rarely a smooth ride. Aside from the need and willingness to be vulnerable enough to reveal your innermost emotions and struggles via your chosen medium, you must learn to find validation in the creative process itself rather than in fame or external appreciation. And while selling a piece to a collector, reading a positive comment on social media, or hearing how someone connects with one of your pieces can be highly rewarding, relying on such external factors as a way to motivate one’s creative path can be detrimental to the main purpose of art as therapy or as a method of communication, which are the two most important roles art plays in my life. Because of this, I have had to learn to separate reactions to my work from the work itself. Most recently, this has been a challenge in my “AI & I” NFT collection due to the controversial nature of AI art in social forums these days.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
During what I like to call my Pandemic and Post-Pandemic Era “Creative Explosion”, I created many new collections. Each of these collections explored my emotional landscape in its own way.
I have always identified my art as visual poems that translate narratives based on innocence and experience, hope and despair, and dreams and reality – aiming to create a dance between the optimist, the pessimist, the dreamer, and the realist. Variations of this statement have been my recurring artist motto for years. The play with positives vs. negatives, optimism vs. pessimism, and hope vs. despair are reflections of my struggles with depression, confidence and the meaning of human existence as a whole. All of these struggles were amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic, pushing me to explore and manage my emotions via art.
In my collection “Playing with Perspectives” I look for literal interpretations of the world through mirrored manipulations that dive into the undefined subconscious. The result is a dream-like reality that forces different perspectives on life views. This collection is mostly composed of abstract photography and video art,
In my “Digital Expressionism” and “Abstract In The Metaverse” collections, I juxtapose positive and negative elements with undefined parameters to showcase the constant inner dialogue between my happy and not-so-happy self.
My “Gothic Metaverse” collection, while an homage to Horror Art, is an exploration of death, fear, and existence beyond the corporal.
One of my favorite pieces during this time is my oil and acrylic on canvas painting “The Agnostic’s Prayer.” This piece is perhaps the most honest expression of my mindset during the pandemic as it showcases the struggle between hope, belief (or the lack of it), and death. You can see a behind-the-scenes making of this video on my Instagram page @golareh.
I sincerely believe art to be more than pretty drawing or realistic illustrations and paintings. It is the connections you create with your work; connections that break through personal shields and defense walls to show the many emotional similarities we all share and to speak to one another in a manner far more meaningful and authentic than words.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
I would not be where I’m at as an artist or creative director today without the constant support and encouragement of my family. They are my rock, my sounding board, my critics, and my guides. Without them, I would not be.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/golareh
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/golareh
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/G0lareh
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/golarehsafarian/
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/G0lareh
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheHealingSalon
- Other: https://www.mindtripz.com
