Before the Meeting

Sarvenaz Keyhani is a staff grade psychiatrist working in general adult psychiatry in London. She has been painting from a young age and had an exhibition in Tehran in 2000. She continues to paint alongside practising psychiatry and believes there is a strong relationship between painting and psychiatry, art therapy being just one example.

The painting Before the Meeting was done in 2008, after the artist attended a psychiatry meeting in Wessex, where she was having her psychiatry training. It is chalk pastel on coloured paper of a group of people gathering in a waiting area. It is a realistic painting; the large areas of warm colour, especially the brown, intensify the warm atmosphere of the place, as well as the aroma of the coffee the guests are drinking. The three paintings on the walls are copies of Lautrec's, added here to increase the effect of colour in the painting as well as being a homage to the great painter for his intense realistic vision and impressive use of colour.