Roshanak  Hatami Mirzai  is born in Iran.   She showed an interest in painting since childhood and with her mother’s encouragement, she started to learn the techniques of “Persian Miniature” at the age of 14.   She attended after-school and summer classes at the Kamol-ol Molk Art School for 4 years.  During this time she studied with Iranian master painters Mohammad Zavieh, Mohammad Tadjvidi, and Akbar Tadjvidi.  In that short period of time, she mastered the techniques of miniature and once she graduated from high school, she was easily accepted to the prestigious School of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran.

At the University of Tehran, she studied and worked with great contemporary painters such as  M. Heydarian and Houshang Seyhoun.   Roshanak spent her years in the university experimenting with different media and techniques.   Her instinctive inclinations led her to recreate beauty and peace on canvas.   She became an expert in watercolor as well as pastel and oil.  Her final project at the University of Tehran was a quilt, “tchehel-tekeh” (literally 40 pieces), made of 536 pieces and in a size of 74”x74”.  Using both her creativity with color and her skills in hand-sewing, this quilt recreated geometric shapes using textiles instead of the usual tiles used in Persian architecture.   Her final thesis was an artistic analysis of color and form in garments and clothing during the Qajar Dynasty.

Roshanak, her husband and their two children moved to Los Angeles in 1976.   In the past 35 years she has studied different techniques and further developed her expertise in painting and drawing by taking various classes in different colleges, universities and private art programs throughout Southern California.   As a result she has been the first to combine Persian miniature and Japanese painting techniques and draw Persian watercolor miniature on chiffon canvas.

Roshanak continues to create works of beauty in Los Angeles.