Originally from Iran, but cut off from his life and family there as a result of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Ali Saif has lived in California for over 40 years, during which time he has operated Loggia Showroom at the San Francisco Design Center and has also become one of the Bay Area’s preeminent abstract painters. He received his BFA from Sonoma State University, studying with Inez Storer, William Morehouse, and Walter Kuhlman. He continued on to receive his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, where he honed his technique with art world luminaries Sam Tchakalian and Bruce McGaw.

Saif’s paintings are his response to the visual chaos that confronts us in everyday life.

He starts with black and white paint and then adds and subtracts colors and shapes. As the surface is worked and reworked many times, the layers build to create an environment filled with visual passageways that lead the viewer through a never-ending series of discoveries – many of them presenting a contradictory sense of time and space that asks the viewer to accept day for night and night for day.