A brush with… Ali Banisadr, a podcast by The Art Newspaper

A brush with…, sponsored by Cork Street Galleries, is an engaging podcast from The Art Newspaper

In the latest round of exclusive, in-depth conversations, host Ben Luke interviews four more leading artists about their life and work through their cultural experiences.

We join Ali Banisadr as he anticipates his two-part exhibition in Florence, at the Palazzo Vecchio and Museo Bardini from April to August.

The Tehran-born, Brooklyn-based artist discusses the epiphanies and influences that have shaped him, from the memory of drawing as a child in the basement of his family home as the Iran-Iraq war raged around him, to how visiting the D-Day landing beaches in Normandy prompted a turning point in his work.

Banisadr describes his experience of synaesthesia, the audio/visual phenomenon that means the artist can hear and feel paintings as he creates them, as well as life-changing encounters with Michelangelo and Hieronymus Bosch, while reflecting on his love of epic poetry and Sufi verse.

Plus the artist responds to the most challenging (and enduring) of questions: if he could live with just one work of art, what would it be? And what is art for?

You can listen to all A brush with… episodes and subscribe to the podcast here.