Poets use metaphors and symbolism to construct images. I construct my images in the same way, except that I am using a different form.

There's something when you're always immersed in the natural landscape where it becomes your healer, in a way, at the same time that it also becomes sort of frightening. I guess that's how I see things, in that form of duality.

I think every one of us dreams, and we know what the quality of a dream is. In many ways, the reason dreams are so - mine are a little bit nightmarish, is that it's when you're really naked and can really face the things you don't face in reality, your darkest anxieties.

Poets use metaphors and symbolism to construct images. I construct my images in the same way, except that I am using a different form.

In this Western world that we have, culture risks being [only] a form of entertainment.

Magical realism allows an artist like myself to inject layers of meaning without being obvious. In American culture, where there is freedom of expression, this approach may seem forced, unnecessary and misunderstood. But this system of communication has become very Iranian.

My work has never been autobiographical. Although the subjects are driven on a personal perspective it's sort of elevated above me. I try to express something that is more a collective expression of crisis.