Maybe I Just 'Like' the Internet

On my blog yesterday I wrote about how a strange series of events and keystrokes on the Internet led me to track down and befriend an artist whose work I happened to find during a random Google search. It was such a positive experience I even titled my blog entry “Why I Love the Internet.”

Well, today I’m not so sure I’m in love anymore, but rather a little creeped out. After reviewing about twenty different websites looking for a formal piece of artwork to hang over my living room couch, I came up empty handed.

That’s right. Twenty kabillion images on world wide web poster sites and not one of them caught my eye: Too big, too small, too red, wrong blue tone, ugly frame, too expensive, too pedestrian. Before giving up hope completely, I thought I would try the trick that had led me to the perfect piece before, and typed “landscape watercolor imagery” into the Google search box.

And after a few scrolls down the screen, damn if my trick didn’t work again and I tripped over yet another artist who painted exactly what I was envisioning in my head. Armed with the name “Behr Watercolors,” I was (hopefully) keystrokes away from finding the perfect painting.

It turns out the artist’s full name is Behrooz Bahadori, and he was born and raised in Tehran, Iran. He spent the bulk of his professional life in Esfahan, one of the oldest and considered one of the most artistic cities in the Middle East.

 “Behr,” as he refers to himself, moved to Turkey in 2007, where critics found his art to be a compelling combination of cultural, classic and modern water color art. Inspired by the positive response to his work, he moved to Seattle, Washington, where he resides today and continues to actively paint a combination of still life and wild country landscapes.

I immediately shot an email to him through his website, tracked him down and befriended him on Facebook. Unlike my encounter with artist Michelle Cobbin, Behr was at least in the same country I was, albeit all the way on the other side of it. I explained who I was and that I was interested in purchasing his work, and what would be the best way to reach him to discuss the matter further.

Well, imagine my surprise when Behr ‘friended’ me on Facebook within a day, but without a written response. This was great. I was not only able to track him down, but the gallery pages on his website were filled with beautiful pieces; while I may not be able to get a reproduction of the exact print I wanted, there were many others to choose from.

To be honest I had forgotten about Behr and had moved on to yet another house project, thinking an artist of his caliber might take weeks to get back to me, when I received the following response on my Facebook page today:

اسلامی زاینده رود و تالاب گاوخونی را نابود کرد 

So, does anyone out there speak or read Arabic? I thought my writing a note to him in English and my hardly ethnic-sounding name of Laura Ries Dralle would be a big hint that I might be looking to communicate in my native tongue.

Now I’m totally paranoid that I’ve set off some sort of international creative arts offensive, and sometime later tonight my front door will be stormed by federal agents wearing berets and armed with paintbrushes, seeking the Ugly American peon who dared to bother the great and powerful Behr.

I’m going to delete all the ‘history’ pages on my laptop right now, turn off my computer and hide upstairs with a bowl of rice pudding. As for the blank space over the living room sofa, I’m sure there’s something at Ikea that will look just fine.