“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.” Friedrich Nietzsche

“I played with paint as a child. So many of us do. But I never thought I’d return to it in a real way as an adult. Life certainly has a way of being cyclical even when we aren’t paying attention to it.

I entered the world of Makeup Artistry, without a guidebook, so to speak, in the summer of 2000. Before 9/11 and before the world and my city, as I knew it, changed forever.

Growing up in Manhattan in the 1980s, was like growing up in a visual playground. The backdrop of my youth was the subway splashed with graffiti tags and the billboards and murals of street artists like Keith Haring and Futura. Street performers were strewn throughout the city. Break dancers, mimes, and musicians filling the air. The streets were alive with creativity.

I always knew I wanted to be creative in my career, and I knew I wanted to play with color and performance , but I didn’t know that my first real canvas would be a face and that my first real job would be applying makeup to it. I also didn’t know how truly influenced I was by the street art that I mentioned until it showed up in my work years later. But 20 years ago, after what felt like a lifetime of dance and theatre training, that training also began to feel like I was training for wishful thinking. The grueling auditions and agents tearing me down made me feel like being an actor and dancer was a recipe for a life of being broke and sad. More importantly they also made me feel like I needed to take control of my own life. I needed to find a sustainable career. That reality was all I knew for sure. So I made a difficult choice and left the world of performance.

Soon after making that decision to leave performance, I attended a 4 day makeup workshop in the summer of ‘00 with Ilana Harkavi, the renowned owner and creator of Il Makiage cosmetics. I was hooked from day one. I was enthralled with the transformation that makeup artistry can bring about in anyone from a movie character to someone attending a black tie event. How applying color to a face could lift a spirit and even change the light that illuminated their face. I took an internship at Il Makiage a year later and decided that I wanted to commit myself to becoming the best makeup artist I could be. So 6 months later I packed my bags and went to makeup school in London. I will always be thankful to Ms. Harkavi for her incredible guidance and her bold makeup style influence. Those 2 things have stuck with me all through the years even in my body paint and artwork on traditional canvas.

Fast forward to my first makeup job at MAC cosmetics in the fall of 2002. I was in heaven. They hired me straight out of school, 2 months after arriving back in NYC with no real world makeup experience, just a love of fashion and lipstick. I moved quickly into a life filled with countless faces and a myriad of experiences as a makeup artist for retail, fashion, print, film, TV, and private clients. It was like a whirlwind. Everything happened so fast that I had no idea of how much work I was actually doing and how hard I was working.

Then, about 10 years in, when I stopped to take a break on a trip to Hawaii, I did some soul searching and realized I couldn’t squeeze my style and creativity into the constraining box of just the beauty world on its own. I had too many ideas that I wanted to try which required a different kind of outlet. So I started to experiment on photoshoots and took my artistry to the other parts of the human body. I began to paint patterns and designs based on how I thought the muscles in the legs, back, and arms would contract in movement. I took my own photos of the movement and found a new form of abstract art that appealed to me. This is where the street art influences first showed up and I am so incredibly grateful for them.

I have since painted on many bodies and moved my work onto traditional canvas as well as on to objects like ballet shoes, boxing gloves and clear PVC stripper heels.

I have ventured into a form of collage work, layering a few of my paintings together to create one final piece and also experimenting with photography. In photography I’m using mostly a gut instinct to capture an image I find fascinating and tapping into my dance training to find movement that can obscure the naked eye. Most recently I have experimented with putting my artwork on commercial merchandise such as leggings, tank tops/t-shirts, iPhone cases, and tote bags.

All of the work displayed here on this website is a culmination of 20 years of self discovery and creativity. It has been quite the journey, and amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and all of the changes and sacrifices we’ve all had to make this year, I’m still on it. Thank you for considering this body of work and I hope you enjoy looking through it.”

Anita Nouryeh 2020

(Almost everything you see is available for purchase in a printed image. Certain images may no longer be available or require special permission for purchase of a print. Contact me directly for all print inquiries and to determine print size, medium (print on canvas or paper) and price. You can also contact me directly for original pieces and commissioned work as well as all of the merchandise (leggings, tops etc…) and pricing for all items. Each image will contain details of availability of the piece, and all credits )

Email me for any information or inquiry or commission request: anouryeh@gmail.com

Instagram @anitanouryeh