Jacob Ebriani

For me, making art is a spiritual act.

About the Artist

For Jacob Ebriani, making art is a spiritual act, an intimate conversation between a man

and his God. Jacobʼs paintings are meditations that explore elemental themes underlying

the material world. Sur-naturalism, his signature technique, transcends surrealism with

dreamlike insights into fundamental workings of nature and the human spirit.

Jacob grew up in Tehran surrounded by the sounds of Sufi poetry and mūsīqī-e sonnatī

— Persian classical music. Selected as an artistʼs assistant when he was just ten years

old, Jacob began to transpose that aural tradition into a visual context. While his

instrument is a brush, his canvases have the narrative quality of songs, or poems. But it

was Sufi mysticism, the intoxicating dance with the divine that guided poets like Rumi

and Hafez, that fundamentally shaped his work. “The mystical side of the mind is very

close to music,” says Jacob, “to a beautiful painting.”

Pursuing deeper truths, Jacob strove to paint directly from the soul.“When you come to

realize what is real is beyond the physical, mystical experience becomes so important.

Itʼs part of life — like food. If you donʼt have it every day, something is missing.” He

developed his sur-natural approach in order to disconnect himself from physical, relative

concerns and work in an almost dreamlike state, accessing deeper levels of awareness.

Rather than rendering subjects literally, Jacob acts as a translator, distilling spiritual

themes to their essential forms through the use of mystical image