Parvaneh Limbert

As a student growing up in my native Iran, I absorbed a love for the country’s many traditional arts – carpet weaving, ceramics, calligraphy, and miniature painting, all of which show a love of design and vivid color and a close connection to the shapes and forms of the natural world. Although I explored painting as a student (and later as a teacher), I rarely had a chance to do serious work.

Later the demands of work and family and the constant moving involved in the life of a Foreign Service family could not lessen my love for painting. Wherever we served, I always found my way to local artists, from the charming designs of Tunisian potters to the bold patterns and vivid colors of West African textile makers.

In 2000, while living in the West African country of Mauritania, I found time to begin painting seriously. I joined a painting group there, and found ample inspiration in the proud people and spectacular desert and ocean landscapes of that vast and empty country. With the support of art lovers among the diplomatic and local community, we organized shows and encouraged many talented, young local artists.

Since that new beginning in 2000, I have continued working mostly in oil. I have also come to enjoy photography. I will sometimes use photographs as a basis for painting, and, in some cases, exhibit the photographs themselves. Mauritania provided spectacular subject matter, but there is great inspiration to be found closer to home.

I have been living in Arlington since 2003, and retired from federal government service in 2005. The area’s rich cultural life, the encouragement of friends and colleagues, and the leisure of retirement have let me continue painting and return to what I had enjoyed so much in my childhood.