The 20 questions carefully prepared for an interview with Jasmine Hatami, a London based Italian Iranian painter, proved unnecessary.
The 59 year-old artist has plenty of hidden meanings and stories to disclose from her colourful paintings, hung on the walls of her apartment in Holland Park. She opens the door to a long and narrow hallway, and begins to talk each painting through, looking at them with eyes that speak just as much as the words.
Jasmine Hatami in her studio, photo by Alex Cimpeanu
“I have this disease: I can’t get rid of colour,” she says. “Sometimes the painting asks for darkness. "
“I make art about what pisses me off”
Every piece she makes is a political statement. One shows toys hanging to hot air balloons, which refers to US school shootings. Another speaks of the refugee children whose life vests were filled with lead. She also has one of Trump as a woman, holding bombs and a baby bottle.
“If Trump were a mother, bombs would be his babies,” the artist says, before asking in the air: “Am I darkish?”
Her painting ‘Humility’(see below) is about the Bible Belts’ reaction to the pandemic. It’s one of her favourites, so she wouldn’t sell it.
'Humility' by Jasmine Hatami, photo by Alex Cimpeanu
“I m really sad that I sold some paintings so quickly, she says, “if you’re an artist you need to sell, if not you don’t exist.”
She shows me on her phone another of her most beloved paintings, which sold before the paint was even dry.
“I know someone who had to get a heart transplant at 19, she says, “it made me think how the heart is the center of life, that’s why flowers are growing out of it."
Hatami also works in finance. She studied it in the US because she wanted to prove she can do something else than art.
“I studied business because I’m shit at Maths,”she says. But it will always be art that she lives for. And she will always be inspired by classics like Raphael.
"Old masters- fucking hell they knew how to paint,” she says, with a conviction that makes you cancel your plans for the weekend and go to the National Gallery.
“Painting is what I live for, but working in the office is what allows me to buy the stuff to paint with,” she says.
Art materials in Jasmine's studio, photo by Alex Cimpeanu
However, in 2008, she quit the office due to health issues, which meant she could stay at home and paint. She submitted work to the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition and got in. it sold in 2 days, to someone who got it online, without seeing it in person.
“So I said ‘I can paint, I'm not going back to work!' and then I starved for 10 years, and now I'm back to the office."
She also points out the importance of using good materials. She’s using water-based oil paint, which is what saved many of her work when her building got flooded last year. “I’m the master of things not working out,” she says. But she always got through them, and is not planning to stop soon.
Jasmine's work is available at http://www.jasminehatami.com
