Roshan Houshmand is an Iranian/American artist who was born in 1961 in the Philippines and later moved to Iran, with a Dutch-American mother and an Iranian father. Her roots and are steeped in ancient, exotic patterns and textures, however her education in the arts is western, with a BA from Bennington College in Vermont, an MA in Art History and an MFA in Painting from Rosary Graduate School of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy, an affiliate of Dominican University in Illinois. She has lived, worked and exhibited in the US, Spain, Italy and Cyprus, with extensive time spent traveling the world. Roshan has been painting for nearly four decades and since 2009 she has been traveling to India to study the arts and culture, which has been a major source of inspiration for her recent work.
Her paintings have been exhibited and are collected in Europe and the US. She has received numerous awards and grants including seven Decentralization Grants from the New York State Council on the Arts between 2005 and 2015, two grants from the A. Lindsay and Olive B. O’Connor Foundation Grant in New York, a New York State Foundation for the Arts SOS Grant in 2010 and a grant from the US Department of State Art in Embassies Program for her painting “The Red Dress” which was exhibited in “21st Century American Women Artists” at the US Mission to NATO in Brussels, Belgium in 2006. In 2011 Ms. Houshmand received Special Merit Recognition for the Representation of Scientific/Mathematical Principle/Phenomena at “The Next Big Idea Festival” in Los Alamos, NM for her painting “Theoretical Event”. Last year she received the Susan Asarian Nickerson Social Commentary Honorable Mention Award for her mixed-media work titled “The Cage” in the exhibition “Endangered” at the Woodstock Art Association and Museum. This year she has been invited to include her painting “Hamsa” in the exhibition focusing on Diversity at the US Embassy residence in San Jose, Costa Rica. She participates in the annual Tibet Benefit Auction at Christie’s in New York, and many other benefit auctions. As an internationally exhibiting artist, her other major exhibitions include “Totem” at the Boca Raton Museum of Art” in Florida, and a retrospective at the Galeria Marianovich Arte in Barcelona, Spain. This year she has been invited to include a painting in the project by Italia Docet/Laboratorium, a Collateral Event of the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale at the Palazzo Barbarigo in Venice, Italy.
Ms. Houshmand is a teaching artist and she actively participates in community art programs. She has taught art at Penn State University, The Art Institute of Pittsburgh, The Community College of Allegheny County (PA), and Escola Massana in Barcelona, Spain. She currently is an instructor of painting and art appreciation at the State University of New York at Delhi, NY. Her studio is in Andes, NY where she has lived since 2003.
For more information please visit www.RoshanHoushmand.com.
Website
http://www.roshanhoushmand.com
