What is the best thing that I love about my work?
With my work I am independent of time and location.
What is my idea of perfect happiness?
When the result of my work surpasses my expectations after thinking and preparung every new picture for months.
What is my greatest fear?
That I would lose my eyesight.
What is the trait that I most deplore in myself?
My fears leading to insomnia.
Which living persons in my profession do I most admire?
William Kentridge (*1955), a South African artist.
What is my greatest extravagance?
My extraordinary patience with people is my extravagance.
On what occasion would I lie?
I despise lies. I would only lie when it comes to death or life.
What is the thing I dislike the most in my work?
I do not like bureaucracy and try to avoid paperwork as much as possible.
When and where was I the happiest, in my work?
Now at my actual place of life and work Remscheid-Lennep.
If I could, what would I change about myself?
I would like to have fewer fears about the people I love.
What is my greatest achievement in work?
I have transfered poems by the Persian poet Hafez (1325-1390) into modern expressive painting, thus bringing together Eastern and Western art and combining them in my figurative as well as abstract pictures into an immediately recognizable, distinctive, individual artistic handwriting.
Where would I most like to live?
Here in Remscheid-Lennep or in Paris.
What is my most treasured possession?
Diamond earrings of my mother.
What is my most marked characteristic?
Patience.
What is my most inspirational location, in my city?
The old Rose Garden, 5 minutes far from our house.
What is my favourite place to eat and drink, in my city?
An Italian restaurant in the medieval old town of Lennep.
What books influenced my life and how?
When I was eleven years old I was awarded a prize for the best young painter in Tehran. The spiritual part of the prize was a „Hafiz’ Divan“ volume bound in green fabric. This book, in which our famous Persian poet sings of nature, love and friendship in mystically allegorical tones, has accompanied my whole artistic life since all my abstract pictures are titled „Hafiz“. Hafiz’ following lines of poetry have never let me go: “Come, let us scatter blossoms, / let us pour wine into the cups, / let us open the roof of heaven / and design each day a new world!” With these lines Hafez challenged his fellow-men to unremitting, sensual, aesthetic creativity – constructive world-critical view and constant aesthetic rebellion were and are one. In this sense, I believe in the future of painting and the advancement of modern art, and strive to open new ways to the past and future of Europe and Asia with a new world language of painting.
Who are my favourite writers?
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, Henry Miller, Haruki Murakami.
You only die once. What music would I listen on my last day?
Arabic Music.
Who is my hero or heroine in fiction?
Scheherazade.
Who are my heroes or heroines in real life?
Doctors and nurses who go on dangerous foreign missions in remote areas to help sick and wounded children and patients and at the same they expose themselves to deadly danger.
Which movie would I recommend to see once in a lifetime?
The French movie comedy „Intouchables – pretty much best friends“ (2011) of the directors Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano which clears up with a lot of prejudices.
What role plays art in my life and work?
Art is an existential part of my life. Without art, life would be very poor.
Who is my greatest fan, sponsor, partner in crime?
My husband.
Whom would I like to work with in 2018?
I prefer to work alone.
Which people in my profession would I love to meet in 2018?
I favour to visit exhibitions rather than to meet artists.
What project, in 2018, am I looking forward to work on?
I have to continue my series „Hafiz, Landscape and Language“, which I am painting since 2012.
Where can you see me or my work in 2018?
I will not exhibit in 2018 because I need a break just to focus on my painting. If somebody wants to see pictures of me, they can watch them in the following videos and photo overviews:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK4iGnHmlTA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfVO0WZysGE
https://www.instagram.com/shahindeheart/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100013031642387
What do the words „Passion never retires“ mean to me?
A life without art has no meaning for me and true art without passion does not exist. Therefore passion is existential for me. No passion, no life.
Which creative heroines should Peter invite to tell their story?
The Australian artist Tetka Rhu. Email: tetka.rhu@gmail.com
How can you contact me?
By email: shahin-de-heart@live.de
Here follows a message of Peter de Kuster, the founder of the Heroine’s Journey
The Heroine’s Journey Conference 2018 – Rome
The Heroine’s Journey is coming to Rome. We are bringing The Heroine’s Journey Conference to the vibrant city of Rome on 12-14 October with a transformative and properly entertaining three-day event on the most important ideas we teach. Our conference aims to transform lives and build the best kinds of connections. It is designed to equip participants with a toolkit of creative entrepreneur skills that can revolutionise relationships, careers and self-understanding.
What to Expect
Our conference is hugely memorable and distinctive. For a start, you are not being taught in entirely standard ways. Peter de Kuster and his team of coaches on stage don’t merely lecture to a passive audience; they invite almost continuous interaction, getting participants to look inside themselves, to complete a variety of exercises and to share their stories with others.
Talks are peppered with films, art, pieces of literature, pieces of music and visual prompts; all the senses are properly stimulated to keep the mind fresh and receptive. Furthermore, there is an enormous emphasis on friendship. We are not merely seated quietly on our own, isolated from other participants. We are guided to mingle, form smaller and larger groups and reveal meaningful things to one another. It is impossible to leave after three days without having made quite a few firm friends.
Conference Leaders
The Conference, led by The Heroine’s Journey founder Peter de Kuster together with a team of coaches specialized in working with creative people takes participants through a three-day immersive experience.
Programme Details
Day 1 FridayThe Heroine’s Journey: Career Management for the Creative Person.
We begin with a look at what the life and career of a creative professional is, how it can be taught – and what we can acquire of it in the days ahead. We consider our particular position in history: living with the desire for creative fulfilment and career success – and we propose that The Heroine’s Journey has a distinctive set of answers to the opportunities, disappointments and dreams of our time.
We identify that a core task of any creative professional is to achieve self-knowledge. To this end, we take you on a journey around your own mind, paying particular attention to the stories you tell yourself about you, your creative work, your time, your money, your self promotion, your relations. Which of these stories brings you to what you want and which of these stories has to be rewritten, transforming in the process your business and life?
Next we consider your meetings with others – clients, friends, business partners. We admit to our longing for sincere connection with others, but also to the challenges of finding this. We learn about the art of connecting, about ways to listen to others fruitfully and how to overcome barriers to intimacy. We teach strategies that help remove excessive superficial contact from our lives, and put all these into practice at a social event with our newfound acquaintances to close the day.
Day 2 Saturday Morning The Power of your Story
On our second day we study why we have the creative career we do – and how our early experiences give us scripts of what, how and whom we are passionate about in our creative career. We learn that there are always more possible paths in your creative career than we initially believe and that we can broaden our unconscious scripts of how we can make money doing what we love by understanding our past stories more clearly.
We also look at the techniques that can make creative careers work in the long term. The Heroine’s Journey firmly believes that passion is ultimately a skill, not an emotion. We learn about how to communicate, how not to sulk, how to allow others to get close to us, how to understand and explain our distinctive way of creating, how to promote ourself and our creations, how to negotiate conflicts through humour and how to deal with conflicts and awkward desires.
We’re reminded that many of the answers we need are within us already, waiting for the correct story to extract them.
Day 2 Saturday Afternoon Creative Confidence
We move on to consider the emotional dimension of our work; what impels us to want to do a certain sort of creative work, and why it is often so hard to align our emotional desires with our practical requirements. We explore our working personalities and sift through our authentic interests.
We consider a variety of blocks and inhibitions which prevent us from pushing forward with our hunches, with particular attention paid to parental and societal expectations.
We pay particular attention to the idea of creative confidence. The difference between success and failure often hangs on this almost humiliatingly small and elusive concept that standard education never touches. We spend vast amounts of time acquiring confidence in narrow professional fields, but we overlook the primordial need to acquire a more free-ranging variety of confidence which can serve us across a range of tasks in professional, but also in personal, life.
Day 3 Sunday They Created Happily Ever After
Passion has a natural and deep appeal. Most of us long to be more passionate and creatively confident, unruffled, at ease and capable of reacting with quiet good humour to life’s setbacks and irritants. But we are often still only at the very beginning of knowing how to be passionate and confident. This morning will give us a range of the most effective answers.
Next we consider passion & happiness. A passionate life is close to, but at points importantly different from, a happy life. It draws upon and exercises our higher capacities, for example, tenderness, care, connection, self-understanding, sympathy, intelligence and creativity. We investigate how to orientate our lives in a more happy direction.
In our final hours together, we go back over the journey we have been on and recap its most fundamental lessons.
Timetable
Who Should Attend The Heroine’s Journey Conference
The Heroine’s Journey Conference is ideal for those looking for an in-depth experience that covers three main areas of our creative lives; Career Management, Creative Confidence, Happiness.
What you can expect:
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A rich programme drawing from the key insights across our core curriculum
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A learning experience combining lectures, films, music, art, exercises and continuous audience participation
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Three-days of engaging content written and led by storyteller and writer Peter de Kuster, supported by inspiring coaches specialized in working with creative professionals
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Daily educational programme and curated morning and evening social activities
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An opportunity to make new friends in a community of like-minded individuals
The Heroine’s Journey Conference 2018 – Rome
Early Bird Price:
Euro 999 (Standard Price Euro 1099) excluding VAT
How to book:
Send us a mail at peterdekuster@hotmail.nl