I was born in Tehran, Iran, and emigrated to the U.S. in time for high school. My academic background includes studying painting at the California College of Arts, and exhibiting in small group shows in the Bay Area as I finished graduate studies in clinical psychology and art therapy. After a decade of working in the business world, I returned to the arts and started a company writing and illustrating greeting cards. I self-published under the title Y Art Works. Around the same time, UNICEF commissioned three different series of small paintings for their line of notecards; Digital Stock, one of the earliest publishers of digital imagery, commissioned work for a CD of painterly effects called Conceptual Backgrounds; and I landed my first design client. I began working with a camera about 10 years ago and I keep a daily visual diary with a focus on my immediate environment, the subtleties of light, and intimate moments of ordinary life. I retired two years ago and now photograph full-time.
