Primarily working with oil and acrylic as his mediums, Farbood Elkaei treads between the definite and the intuitive as he distills naturally occuring forms into abstract geometric compositions. In his artworks, colourful papers are cut and superimposed over amorphously painted landscapes, clouds, mountains and skies, to produce a contemplative dialogue between the seen and the imagined.
The selected body of work, created between 2019 and 2021, marks a significant turning point in Elkaei’s practice where he consciously moved away from a focus on outcomes towards a space guided by instinct and playfulness, as colours, texture and form became his tools for exploration. In earlier works, nature was depicted from a distance- vast, open, and observational. Here, however, the compositions became more intimate, abstract and emotionally resonant.
A key influence on this shift was an album of artists’ drawings from Qajar Iran- a collection of anonymous student sketches from the 19th and 20th centuries, each framed within richly detailed, decorative borders. Inspired, he began creating small-scale works on cardboard, embedding layered, vivid frames into the compositions.
These frames- referencing the tradition of miniature painting while rendered in abstract form - became metaphors for intimacy and structure, both at once containing and revealing. For Elkaei, they functioned as “windows” into moments of vulnerability, contemplation, and spontaneity.
This series- encompassing collages and framed abstractions- offered the artist a more liberated mode of working, away from the constraints of large-scale canvases. It marked a return to painting with a renewed vision; a perspective shaped by tradition yet unbound by it. What emerged was therefore a more personal and layered approach- a new direction in the artist’s evolving practice.