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Samir Khurshid is an Iraqi painter living in Portland, Oregon. From humble beginnings sketching portraits in the marketplace of his Iraqi hometown, Samir has traveled a difficult road to arrive in Portland, Oregon.
Once a portrait painter of Saddam Hussein, completing almost 400 portraits of the former dictator during his compulsory military service, Samir became a beloved portraitist at American military Forward Operating Base Bernstein after the fall of Hussein’s regime. When anti-American factions labeled him a traitor and threatened his life and his loved ones, he escaped to Turkey, where he painted the portrait of the Mayor of Istanbul, and nearly accepted an offer to be smuggled to Italy in order not to be deported back to Iraq. Instead, Samir got on the UN refugee list and waited five years to be sent to Portland to start a new life in America, where he arrived in 2010.
He works out of his studio at the Falcon Art Community and in 2012 he was the recipient of a prestigious, year-long Calligram Falcon Fellowship.
Samir Khurshid is an Iraqi painter living in Portland, Oregon. From humble beginnings sketching portraits in the marketplace of his Iraqi hometown, Samir has traveled a difficult road to arrive in Portland, Oregon.
Once a portrait painter of Saddam Hussein, completing almost 400 portraits of the former dictator during his compulsory military service, Samir became a beloved portraitist at American military Forward Operating Base Bernstein after the fall of Hussein’s regime. When anti-American factions labeled him a traitor and threatened his life and his loved ones, he escaped to Turkey, where he painted the portrait of the Mayor of Istanbul, and nearly accepted an offer to be smuggled to Italy in order not to be deported back to Iraq. Instead, Samir got on the UN refugee list and waited five years to be sent to Portland to start a new life in America, where he arrived in 2010.
He works out of his studio at the Falcon Art Community and in 2012 he was the recipient of a prestigious, year-long Calligram Falcon Fellowship.
Samir Khurshid is an Iraqi painter living in Portland, Oregon. From humble beginnings sketching portraits in the marketplace of his Iraqi hometown, Samir has traveled a difficult road to arrive in Portland, Oregon.
Once a portrait painter of Saddam Hussein, completing almost 400 portraits of the former dictator during his compulsory military service, Samir became a beloved portraitist at American military Forward Operating Base Bernstein after the fall of Hussein’s regime. When anti-American factions labeled him a traitor and threatened his life and his loved ones, he escaped to Turkey, where he painted the portrait of the Mayor of Istanbul, and nearly accepted an offer to be smuggled to Italy in order not to be deported back to Iraq. Instead, Samir got on the UN refugee list and waited five years to be sent to Portland to start a new life in America, where he arrived in 2010.
He works out of his studio at the Falcon Art Community and in 2012 he was the recipient of a prestigious, year-long Calligram Falcon Fellowship.