Culver City Observer -

By Christine Peake

Contemporary artist Haleh Mashian opened the final exhibition of the year with her newest series, Sacred Waters at MASH Gallery in the Arts District, in downtown Los Angeles.

This showstopper of a collection highlights Mashian's mastery of texture and three-dimensionality in her work, allowing her conceptual vision to flow beyond the confines of the canvas. Sacred Waters offers an immersive experience, where paint, palette and materials embody the liquid properties of water.

The opening night of this stunning exhibit was packed full of art fans, Hollywood elite and even a couple of well known comedians came to support Mashian, who looked striking in her silver dress and boots than merged and twinkled into the backdrop of her vast art pieces.

The exhibit is definitely one to visit for all art fans. The depth and beauty of these exceptional pieces of art are a sight to see.

Sacred Waters establishes the ocean and its waves as Mashian's primary inspiration. "Each wave is unique, but part of a whole that is constantly rising, yet surrendering to the mass of the ocean-only to rise again," describes Mashian. "It's symbolic of the cycle of life and death."

"Water preserves and water destroys," Mashian observes. "I tapped into the energy of water-constantly creating, destroying and also preserving. I felt the ebb and flow in my approach to doing these series, with a very fierce calm energy. Water is never stuck. When the weather is cold, water changes to ice, with heat comes it becomes vapor. When something is in its path, water goes around it or waits patiently till it gathers enough force to conquer its obstacle."

Using various materials evocative of the natural world, Mashian's waterscapes reveal the very physicality and opposing forces in water: its torrents and stillness, its ebbs and flows, its shimmer and depth, it's roughness and ripples. In each of these works, Mashian portrays water as a cleansing, immersive substance that both washes away our detritus and calms our senses with its rejuvenating and constant momentum. In this way, water is both substance and solution-that which carries and cleanses the body and soul.

All the hues of oceans and seas can be found in these six singular works. Obsidian-to-cerulean blues juxtaposed with violets, verdant shades of celadon, jade and lime flow into plums, magentas, ochre, with flecks of sun yellow and glacial white.

Mashian's palette suggests the feel of gazing at an expanse of ocean, taking in the meditative motion of its waves. In this way, Mashian calls forth the sacred in our natural surroundings, our visceral sense of knowing what calms, rejuvenates and steadies us so that we can stay on course.

"We can have the courage to rise, the willingness to surrender to what comes our way." Mashian reassures. "It's the practice of no resistance, embracing the flux. It's the comfort of knowing we can be like water and emulate its fluid characteristics." Mashian connects the adaptability of water as the key to how to maintain our composure and equilibrium given the long pandemic and the state of the world. Water is the way.

Mashian's works consistently contain homages to that which is natural, wooded forests, intense flora, or the mutable forces within the feminine. Sacred Waters is the organic outgrowth to Mashian's idea that the natures of women and the rhythms of the natural world pulse in tandem-mutable and fluid, ever-changing and constant. "Water knows intuitively when to take a stance and when to let go-a feminine quality," Mashian adds. "Sacred Waters is the visual representation of my flotation journey to a state of creative release."

To learn more about the phenomenal artist and the stunning Mash Gallery go to

http://www.MashGallery.Com