Top Image: Maldives no.14, 60x90, Soft pastel on paper, 2015
Just Below Top: Zaria Drawing (photograph by Brian Maranan Pineda);
Portrait of Zaria Forman (photograph by Trevor Traynor)
Middle Image: Whale Bay, Antarctica no.1, 60x90, Soft pastel on paper, 2016
Just Below Middle: Greenland no.69, 50x50, Soft pastel on paper, 2014;
Zaria working in her Studio
Bottom Image: Maldives no.13, 72x127.5, Soft pastel on paper, 2015
The inspiration for Forman's drawings began in early childhood when she traveled with her family throughout several of the world's most remote landscapes, which were the subject of her mother's fine art photography. Forman was born in South Natick, Massachusetts and currently works and resides in Brooklyn, New York. She studied at the Student Art Centers International in Florence, Italy and received a BS in Studio Arts at Skidmore College in New York. Forman’s works have been in publications such as Juxtapoz Magazine, National Geographic Magazine, Huffington Post, and the Smithsonian Magazine. Zaria was featured on Good Day New York, Fox News, and interviewed by Lucy Yang on ABC7 New York Eyewitness News.
Recent achievements include participation in Banksy's Dismaland, speaking at a live TED event at the Town Hall Theater in NYC, and a solo exhibition at Winston Wächter Fine Art in New York in September and October of 2015. Her drawings have been used in the set design for the Netflix TV series House of Cards.
In August 2012 Forman led Chasing the Light, an expedition sailing up the NW coast of Greenland, retracing the 1869 journey of American painter William Bradford and documenting the rapidly changing arctic landscape. Continuing to address climate change in her work, Forman traveled multiple times to the Maldives, the lowest-lying country in the world, and arguably the most vulnerable to rising sea levels.
Forman has been invited aboard the National Geographic Explorer as an artist-in-residence this coming November and December, traveling to Antarctica. Her next solo show will take place at Winston Wächter Fine Art’s Seattle location, in February and March of 2017.