Parva Zarei is one of the newest members of the San Diego Watercolor Society (SDWS). She is originally Persian but she lived in Germany for many years before moving to first Northern California and then Southern California, where she settled three years ago. Parva considers California to be her forever home and she currently lives and works in San Diego. In addition to formal art classes in school, she took extra lessons with famous artists. From there, she evolved her own style by studying artists of different genres, and by visiting galleries and museums in Germany, France, and the United States. Portraiture is her favorite subject though she also enjoys painting animals, abstracts, and scenes of motion. Her main style is Geometric Expressionism. Usually, she works with mixed-media paper and drawing, then adds colors and marks using markers or pen. Parva is a former member of the Burlingame Art Society (BAS) where she was awarded an honorable mention for one of her paintings. She is also a member and member-at-large of the Art Guild of Pacifica in Northern California (AGP). Finally, Parva did some voluntary work at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History and the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. Since she moved to San Diego, SDWS caught her attention as one of the most popular watercolor societies not only in California but the US. As a result, she started to visit its shows regularly, and finally joined this year.
Parva’s piece “Request” in the February members show appears at first glance to be acrylics-based. Surprisingly, however, it is done in gouache. Using good technique, she was able to work on canvas in a subtle way to make it look like acrylics.
