Gola is a Swedish-Iranian artist who paints mostly in oil. She has always been creative and started using paints at a very early age. Her father encouraged her creativity, at least until she started decorating the walls of her childhood home. At that point even her father’s legendary indulgence evaporated, and he directed her towards canvases and paper sheets. Gola studied fashion and design at high school during which time she received several awards for her paintings. At 22 she found herself in California where she continued to study various art forms, among others Textile Design and Chinese painting at The University of San Fransisco. After her stay in California, she moved back to Iran before finally ending up in Sweden where she creates Prisma and takes on the great challenge of promoting female art. Gola began her work with various project managements in arts and crafts from 1993 to 1998. At the same time, she studied Adult Pedagogy and Adult Education at Linköping University. She established Prisma Art School, a branch of Stockholm Folkhögskola (Stockholm College) and ran Prisma as an art and craft education for women during the period 1998 – 2013.

Between 1998 to 2006 she was heavily involved with the works of her female artists and organized several study trips mostly in Sollentuna, Stockholm and farther up in Dalarna. Gola has never shied away from a challenge, specially always when it comes to taking big steps in either her own or other people’s personal development.

In 1999 she took her Prisma students to the northern parts of Dalarna County and in collaboration with Mora Folkhögskola (Mora Community College) they took on the traditional Dala horse where the students learned the craft of carving horses. In addition, the students also had the opportunity to develop their own personal creativity by painting the horses with inspiration from their own backgrounds and traditions from each home country. The result was about 30 uniquely decorated Dala horses that toured Stockholm in various exhibitions.

Her involvement with numerous kinds of creativity was noticed in the press and eventually led to her being recognised – for example, in 2000 Gola was rewarded a scholarship in Sollentuna. In 2001 she was granted a Vitsippspris (the prize of the Wood Anemone) from the Sollentuna municipality with the following notation:

”Gola is a brilliant ambassador for the women’s enthusiasm that are flourishing in our multicultural municipality.”

In 2004, she was chosen as “Initiator of the Year” within the culture and leisure committee area in Sollentuna municipality.

Throughout her life, Gola nurtured the dream of her own art studio and in 2019 the dream finally became true in Skåne. As previously mentioned, she works primarily in oil paint and uses a mixture of her own imagination with everything she sees, experiences and dreams about.

When you look at Gola’s paintings you notice her love for the nature. This manifested itself in the shape of the trees in a forest, various reflections of water and sunsets. These altogether strongly resonate with her childhood experiences of the world around her.

The pandemic has been a tough challenge for Gola as for everyone else and it hit hard on her inspiration and work, but on reflection she has realized that when life stops, nature still seems to live on.

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” Jalaluddin Rumi