Painting Restoration
Fatana restores damaged, torn, and aged oil and acrylic paintings, carefully matching original colors and brushwork to preserve each artwork’s style, character, and artistic integrity.
Fatana Baktash Arifi has many years of experience restoring damaged paintings and helping preserve artworks that hold artistic, historical, and personal significance. Her restoration work includes torn, aged, and damaged oil and acrylic paintings, undertaken in collaboration with local art galleries and for individual clients.
Her approach emphasizes careful observation, color matching, and the recreation of original brush techniques. Rather than imposing a new style, Fatana works to respect the original artist’s visual language, preserving the painting’s character while carefully repairing damaged areas. Her attention to detail has produced restorations that delighted clients with how closely the repaired sections harmonized with the original artwork.
Her problem-solving ability also extends beyond paintings. In one memorable case, she restored a treasured family photograph that had been scratched with a ballpoint pen. After other places had considered the damage impossible to repair, Fatana developed her own approach and successfully restored the photograph, bringing great happiness to its owner.
These experiences reflect her patience, resourcefulness, and sensitivity toward artworks and cherished images. For Fatana, restoration is more than repairing visible damage; it is a careful process of preserving visual integrity, honoring artistic craftsmanship, and helping meaningful images continue to be appreciated.
Art Teaching
Fatana Baktash Arifi is a fine artist, illustrator, and experienced art educator with approximately 25 years of teaching experience in academic institutions and community art programs in the United States and abroad. She has taught at Kabul University, the Institute of Fine Arts affiliated with Peshawar University, Hunarkada Academy of Visual and Performing Arts, and other educational institutions. In the United States, her teaching experience includes the Durant Center in Alexandria, Virginia, and art education programs associated with Grumbacher.
From 1995 to 2000, while living as a refugee, Fatana founded and directed Maimanagi Art and Culture Center in Pakistan, providing art education to refugees from Afghanistan and members of the surrounding communities.
Her teaching encompasses drawing, watercolor, oil painting, and portraiture. Guided by a student-centered philosophy, she adapts her teaching methods to individual abilities, learning styles, and creative interests. She combines technical instruction and hands-on demonstrations with constructive feedback, artistic discussion, and encouragement, helping students develop both practical skills and confidence in their creative potential.
Fatana believes that every person possesses artistic abilities that can be discovered and nurtured through patient guidance and meaningful practice. Her approach brings traditional artistic principles together with contemporary methods, fostering an inclusive learning environment where students of different ages, backgrounds, and skill levels can grow as artists.
Graphic Designing
Fatana Baktash is an accomplished illustrator and graphic designer whose artistic foundation combines traditional fine arts with digital design and production skills.
During her academic years at Kabul University, she distinguished herself through creative projects in magazine design, illustrated stories, stencil-making, printmaking, silkscreen printing, and poster design. Her work demonstrated a strong understanding of illustration, composition, and visual communication.
While living in Pakistan, Fatana worked as a freelance illustrator, completing assignments for international organizations, local nonprofit organizations, and individual clients, including the United Nations and U.S.-based organizations. Her creative work has included children's book illustrations and illustrated short stories published in children's magazines, contributing to visual storytelling for young readers.
Combining traditional artistic craftsmanship with computer-based and digital techniques, Fatana creates a wide range of visual materials, including books, magazines, logos, banners, advertisements, flyers, and web graphics. Her ability to work across different media allows her to adapt visual concepts to diverse communication needs while maintaining an artistic approach to design.
For Fatana, graphic design is a meeting point between fine art, illustration, and purposeful visual communication, where creativity and technical skills work together to convey ideas effectively.
Digital Art
Fatana Baktash Arifi developed an interest in digital art after seeing a digital painting created with a Wacom Cintiq pen computer. Inspired by the possibilities of this medium, she acquired a similar device and began creating artwork using a stylus and digital drawing tools.
With a strong foundation in traditional fine arts, realism, and portraiture, Fatana applies her knowledge of observation, color, composition, light, and form to digital painting. She has created numerous digital artworks, including digital portraits, adapting her traditional artistic approach to the possibilities of an electronic canvas.
Digital art introduced her to new painting techniques, virtual brushes, and layer-based workflows, allowing her to experiment with effects and methods that complement traditional materials. Her digital skills have also expanded her graphic design practice, enabling her to develop visual concepts into creative 2D and 3D projects.
Fatana works with a range of digital applications, including Adobe Photoshop, Krita, SketchBook Pro, CorelDRAW, and Blender, alongside other tools for visual design and creative production. Her digital practice encompasses painting, portraiture, illustration, graphic design, and selected animation and multimedia projects.
For Fatana, digital art is a natural extension of her fine-art background, bringing together traditional artistic principles and contemporary technology to broaden the possibilities of visual expression.
Writing and Poetry
Type your paragraph here
T-Shirt Printing
Fatana Baktash Arifi has a background in silkscreen printing, commonly known as screen printing or T-shirt printing, which she studied as part of her university art courses.
During her university years, she created outstanding silkscreen projects that distinguished her work among her fellow students and demonstrated her artistic ability, technical understanding, and enthusiasm for the medium. Screen printing introduced her to the creative possibilities of transferring artwork onto surfaces beyond traditional paper and canvas.
After moving to the United States, Fatana continued practicing this technique alongside her other artistic activities. She created garment prints for family, friends, and local clients, applying her screen-printing knowledge and artistic skills to produce designs on wearable items.
For Fatana, T-shirt screen printing is an extension of her visual art practice, bringing together design, composition, color, and practical craftsmanship. This skill reflects her ability to work with different materials and printing methods, extending artistic expression beyond traditional painting and drawing into wearable art.
Website Designing
Fatana Baktash Arifi combines her background in fine arts, graphic design, and visual communication with practical experience in website design and development. Her interest in web design extends her artistic practice into the digital environment, where visual presentation, functionality, and user experience work together.
Using WordPress and the Elementor page builder, Fatana has designed and customized website pages for her own projects, friends, and a nonprofit organization. Her experience includes working with themes, plugins, templates, navigation menus, mega menus, page layouts, and responsive design elements to organize content and create visually cohesive websites
Her artistic background informs her approach to website design, particularly in color coordination, typography, composition, imagery, and the presentation of creative work. She also understands the basic terminology and structure of WordPress websites and applies minor coding and CSS customizations when needed to refine layouts and styling.
hrough hands-on experience, Fatana continues to develop her understanding of website structure, design tools, and the relationship between visual creativity and practical functionality. Her approach combines artistic sensibility with problem-solving, helping her create online spaces that communicate ideas clearly and present artistic or organizational content effectively.
Picture Framing
Fatana Baktash Arifi has 20 years of experience in professional picture framing, combining technical expertise, artistic judgment, and a strong understanding of artwork presentation and preservation. Her professional background includes framing design and specialist positions at Michaels Arts and Crafts, gallery and picture-framing management at Art Expo in Virginia, and freelance work with local businesses and individual clients.
Her formal training includes picture-framing certification programs at Michaels, a picture-framing course at Pima Community College in Arizona, and an artist and framer diploma from Thompson College of Education Direct. She also holds silver and gold picture-framing certifications.
Fatana’s technical skills encompass custom mat design and cutting, single and multiple mat openings, decorative cuts, museum and preservation mounting, dry mounting, fabric mounting, and three-dimensional shadow-box framing. Her experience includes working with a variety of materials and artworks, as well as frame chopping, joining, and related production equipment.
Beyond the technical aspects, Fatana brings an artist’s eye to color coordination, composition, proportion, and the relationship between an artwork and its frame. Her experience in customer service, sales, gallery operations, and management further strengthens her understanding of the framing profession.
or Fatana, picture framing combines craftsmanship, design, and preservation, helping artworks and cherished objects achieve a presentation that complements their character and protects their value.
Scissors Silhoutte
As a fine artist with extensive experience in portrait painting and drawing, Fatana Baktash Arifi has expanded her artistic exploration into the traditional practice of scissor-cut silhouette portraits.
Her interest in this art form began as a personal experiment using ordinary scissors and recycled paper. After creating several practice pieces, she discovered a natural interest in shaping recognizable facial profiles directly from paper, without first drawing the outlines or using painting tools.
Scissor-cut silhouette portraiture requires close observation and a keen understanding of facial structure. Because the portrait relies on the outer contour rather than color, shading, or interior details, the shape of the forehead, nose, lips, chin, and head plays an essential role in expressing an individual's likeness and character.
Drawing upon her background in portraiture, Fatana continues to explore this delicate art form as a creative pursuit. For her, each cut offers an opportunity to study proportion, refine hand control, and discover how a simple piece of paper can convey the distinctive character of a face. This practice reflects her continuing curiosity and her belief that artistic expression can emerge through experimentation with even the most modest materials.