I didn't realize it until recently, but I don't paint subjects. I paint stories.
Every piece in my collection started somewhere real — a feeling, a memory, a person, a moment that refused to let me go until I put it on canvas. I'm Mamak, the artist behind PointohView Designs, and I want to tell you where these paintings actually came from. Because I think when you know the story, you see the painting completely differently.
Freedom Girl
I came across a photograph of a woman with her face lifted toward the sun — bold, free, completely at peace. As someone with deep roots in Iranian culture, her image hit me somewhere profound. Iranian women are among the strongest, most resilient people I know. She looked like someone who had fought for her freedom and finally found it. I called her Freedom Girl and I painted her in oil, chasing that warmth, that light, that quiet triumph. She hangs in my collection as a tribute to every woman who has ever simply demanded the right to be herself.
The Pondering Girl
This one started as a technical exercise — I wanted to push my skills further, to chase the way sunlight turns hair golden. But she became something more than a study. There is something in her expression that I cannot explain and have never been able to fully read. Is she amused? Is she judging you? Is she lost in thought about something that happened five minutes ago? I genuinely don't know. And I love that about her. She is a mystery I painted but never solved.
The Iranian Country Girl
She was one of my first paintings. A young girl from rural Iran, just in from the fields or from play — happy in that uncomplicated way that only children living close to the earth seem to manage. I painted her because I wanted to capture something I find increasingly rare — the beauty of a simple life. She reminds me that joy doesn't need to be complicated. It just needs to be real.
The Girl with the Floral Crown
I didn't realize until I painted her that I keep being drawn to rural children. She is shy. She has been out picking flowers and someone — her mother, I imagine — wove a crown into her hair. She doesn't smile. She just looks at you with those steady, searching eyes that make you want to know everything about her. She quietly steals your heart and doesn't apologize for it.
The Smiling Iranian Peasant Boy
He is one of my absolute favourites. He is absolutely up to something — that smile gives it away completely. Maybe he just escaped a tackle on a dusty soccer field. Maybe he's ducked inside to avoid getting caught for something. He's wearing a hand-me-down plaid shirt and he couldn't care less. He is rich in every way that actually matters. Painting him made me happy every single day I worked on him.
Dandelions for Josie
My friend Josie lost her mother. She told me that dandelions remind her of her mom. I painted this for her, and I have never forgotten why. There is something extraordinary about a dandelion — it spends its whole life building toward one single moment, and then it lets everything go. Every seed carried away on the wind, to somewhere new. This painting is for anyone who has loved someone and let them go.
Forever Bloom — For My Daughter
My daughter was away at university when I painted this. She loves flowers — always has. I wanted to give her something that said what words sometimes can't quite carry. So I painted her bold, lush blooms bursting off a deep green background, full of the confidence I see in her every day. The message was simple: you will forever bloom. I didn't know when I painted it that so many other people would feel it too. But that's what art does — it starts as something personal and becomes something universal.
The Tobermory Lighthouse — For Janis
My friend Janis comes from a family with roots in Tobermory, Ontario. Her family lived in a lighthouse that eventually burned down. She asked me to paint her a lighthouse — not as decoration, but as remembrance. Something to hang on her wall that says we were here. This was ours. Commissioned paintings carry a different energy. They are painted with intention, with someone specific in mind. This lighthouse holds all of that.
These are my paintings. But really, they are other people's stories that I was trusted to tell.
That is the greatest privilege of being an artist — not the technique, not the medium, not the finished piece hanging on a wall. It's being the person someone turns to and says I need you to capture this feeling. I need this moment to last.
I am Mamak. I paint because I see beauty everywhere — in the faces of people, in the landscapes around me, in the stories we carry. And I want the world to see what I see.
If one of these paintings speaks to you, it's probably because it was always meant to.