A MOST IMPROBABLE HOMECOMING

For much of my professional life, I’ve introduced people to artists.

Perhaps it’s time I introduced you to the artist I’ve been all along.

Although, come to think of it, my mother might have something to say about that.

My mother, Pooran Cheknian, was a painter. I, meanwhile, had developed an incurable affection for the theatre, which landed me in New York, studying at the Stella Adler Conservatory around 1990. It was a splendid education. Among other things, I discovered that life was positively teeming with extraordinary characters, most of whom had never set foot on a stage, and several of whom ought never to have been allowed off one.

Then came museums, art history, and decades of encounters with artists, their work, and their ambitions. I founded MuseumViews in 2003 when I started my adventure at the University of Oxford, and made something of a career out of observing the artistic temperament. A profession for which, regrettably, I was not without personal qualifications.

My postgraduate studies took me to the Courtauld Institute and the University of Oxford, where I pursued M.Phil. and D.Phil. research in art history and museology. Not content with admiring art, I felt compelled to investigate how it was collected, interpreted, exhibited, and remembered.

An admirable preparation, as it turns out, for the exquisite inconvenience of having one’s own work subjected to similar scrutiny.

But theatre, that most persistent of afflictions, never left me.

My paintings are not so much portraits of celebrated people as portraits of performances, personalities, and moments that have taken up permanent residence in my imagination. Ian McKellen’s Richard III at BAM in June 1992, for instance, has been refusing his final exit for more than three decades.

These days, I paint and write plays, surrounded by an increasingly unruly company of actors, playwrights, dancers, composers, and bouquets of mutinous flowers, all apparently convinced that the house belongs to them.

And, after decades spent observing human vanity, ambition, and the astonishing lengths to which people will go to create, collect, and preserve their passions, it seemed only fair to contribute a little of my own.

A new chapter? Not entirely.

More of a homecoming.

Homa Taj