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Mokarameh Ghambari, Iranian village woman

Mokarameh Ghanbari, Iranian village woman, who lives near the city of Sari in the Caspian region of Mazandaran, is now in her seventies and still incredibly active. She has been painting for ten years in the Naïve genre.

Mokarameh Ghanbari
She began painting at the age of seventy in 1995, after the death of her husband and the departure of her children from home. She had not received any previous training.
She began painting on the walls of her house and continued to paint on anything she could, from stone to wood to paper, using natural herbal paint. After her talent was discovered and she was featured in the Seyhoon Gallery she became a full time professional painter.

The motifs of her works are derived from ancient and religious myths and stories and the simple occurrences of village life. She is still not familiar with the concept of perspective in painting and continues to paint in the Naïve mode.
She uses all kinds of material in her works and paints on all kinds of surface—she is right now using three-fold plywood and Styrofoam.

She uses a beautifully colorful palette to paint her version of ancient myths and religious epics or just the events of village life such as weddings and celebrations.
In the year 2001 she was rewarded an award for outstanding woman of the year by a well-known NGO