Arminée Chahbazian has been a practicing visual artist for nearly 40 years. Academic studies include:
Yale University - MFA 1984
Scripps College - BA 1982
Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture - 1981
Born in Colorado, she has been based in Northern California for 28 years - this follows influential years spent living and working in France and in the eastern US.
Arminée's work has been included in numerous exhibitions along both coasts of the US, as well as in France and Holland; most recent shows have been focused in the San Francisco Bay area in such venues as the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Seager Gray Gallery, the Marin Art & Garden Center, and the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. Los Angeles area venues include the Brand Art Center and Lois Lambert Gallery. She is an active member of EcoArtSpace and her widely ranging work has been added regularly to many private collections.
A complete resume can be seen here.
Her work as a sculptor, working with a variety of media, continues to inform the process behind her works on paper, as well as her painting; composition, form, color and texture evolve through an experimental immersion in the physicality of materials.
Most recently, the content and thrust behind the work is based on observations of environmental shifts, with a thematic focus on the aesthetics and power of water (or lack thereof). Nature's self-described vulnerability, endurance, beauty and drama are all present, yet it is the human response to nature's continuity and mystery that drives Arminée's work. Abstraction joins representation to suggest a somewhat surreal environment where questions outweigh answers. This work would not take its form if not for Arminée's choice to live and work immersed in a place rich in nature's materiality - manifest in the winds that stir the trees, or in the countless pine needles that cover the ground she treads, or in the clarity of both the water that streams past and the stars that encircle overhead. Hers is a quiet, introspective process.