Picasso borrowed from African masks which appeared in his early work like Les Demoiselles D’Avignon in 1907. Earlier, Monet borrowed color, vantage point and design ideas from Japanese artists like Hokusai. Other artists have knowingly or not borrowed from other cultures to extend the reach of their picture vocabulary and to extend the reach of their own imagination. Our concept of paradise is derived from ancient Persia. It was a walled enclosure, a walled garden enclosure. Outside those walls was the dangerous and uncivilized territory while inside the garden all was managed and serene. The garden demanded water for life and, it was usually present in the form of a well, pool, or stream with its life-bearing essence giving it a central position. Our biblical garden of Eden is based on this history. Eden has water, fruit trees and serene bounty. Abraham had lived in Persia. The value of paradise is portrayed and amplified by Persian artists such as Sultan-Mohammed( see example 1, Shirin Bathing) with their use of gold pigment.
My second is example by Mizra Ali on the subject of a “Father’s Discourse on Love” has the dark life-giving well in the center of blue tiles. Usually, the gold was suspended as gold dust in a medium of gum of acacia. Our modern day watercolors use a binding medium of gum Arabic. They used strong pure colors. Lapis Lazuli for ultramarine blue, malachite for green, azurite for light blue, cinnabar for red , ochres and lead/tin for yellow. The colors were symbolic and in keeping with Greco-Roman traditions: blue for the sky, black or dark blue-green for water, gold for eath or sky depending on artistic needs( yellow gold for sunlight, red gold and green gold for earth) and red for heat or fire or authority. To demonstrate borrowing from thes traditions I have two examples of my work. 
The first landscape is more traditional but, follows the Persian vertical format with a reference to golden effects, finely tuned edges, strong colors like golden(golden green and red ) areas set opposite ultramarine blue ( with hints of deep green) symbolizing water juxtaposed to earth. My second image abstracts a portion of the first one. Here the image is more map-like and therefore, more Persian. The blue shape vaguely threads its way through the gold delineated areas like a serpent in the garden. My strokes are minutely calligraphic and gestural as would be found in Persian painting of the 15th and 16th centuries. I have titled the last image “Water Garden In A Sultan’s Court” even though I found the natural image near my home in Connecticut.
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