Mahshad Hojati is a theatre actress, painter, and illustrator whose artistic practice moves between performance, painting, illustration, and storytelling. With nearly two decades of experience in theatre, her understanding of character, the body, gesture, expression, movement, and light has been deeply shaped by the performing arts. This experience continues to have a profound influence on the way she approaches visual art.
Hojati’s paintings often begin with a character, an image, or a fragment of a narrative. Some of her works draw inspiration from theatre, literature, mythology, and well-known fictional characters, while others emerge from stories and imaginary worlds of her own creation. Across these diverse bodies of work, she is particularly interested in creating images that suggest a narrative beyond what is immediately visible, inviting the viewer to imagine what may have happened before the depicted moment or what might unfold after it.
Her artistic practice encompasses both traditional and digital painting, including colored pencil, acrylic, ink, watercolor, and digital painting. She considers technique a means of discovering the most appropriate visual language for each work rather than an end in itself. Her theatrical background continues to influence the way she constructs composition and develops characters within her paintings, while her interest in storytelling leads her to see her works not simply as images, but as fragments of larger worlds—worlds that continue to unfold within her imagination.
