Paul Klee: a guest blog by Mahdavi Pink

When I first came to America--it must have been the early 1980's--I went to a show of Paul Klee's paintings in New York City. I think it was at The Met but it might have been at The Whitney, it doesn't matter where.

What does matter is not only that I saw the Paul Klee paintings, but that once I left the musuem everything I saw looked like a Paul Klee painting. 

This condition lasted for at least a week. I couldn't get Paul Klee out of my eyes, not that I wanted to necessarily, but it was a little disorienting.

This was about the time I decided to become an artist myself, a painter. When I'd left Iran I was planning on going to architecture school. Paul Klee changed all that. It was like he was in my bloodstream, steering me to become an artist. All I wanted to do was to make art, to make images that would cause other people to see how I saw the world.

Gosh, that was over 30 years ago. It's hard to believe. I've had shows of my paintings here and there, nothing major. You've probably never seen them. I paint under a pseudonym: Paula Clay. I'm 56 years old now and still hoping to hear someone say that after they look at my paintings everything they see looks like a 'Pink."

Mahdavi Pink is the pseudonym of Paula Clay, a painter who lives in Brooklyn. Ms. Clay was born in Tehran but has lived in the US since 1981. She says she's saving up to buy a Paul Klee.