Bardia Soltanabadi

I am a Swedish-Iranian painter living in Copenhagen. I also work as a medical doctor, and I started painting as a counterweight to that work: a way to break from the rigidity of the profession and make room for things medicine rarely has space for.

I paint in two ways: figurative portraits and abstract compositions. I use classical techniques to try to capture the nature of the people I see. With the abstract work, I try to distill colour and form to its absolute essence. Over time, the two have started to influence each other.

I am self-taught and I work mainly in oil, combining techniques from the Old Masters and Brown School brushwork with the methods of more recent portrait and abstract painters.