Born and educated in Armenia, Emil Kazaz was raised in a household alive with applied creativity; his father was a cobbler and his mother, a seamstress for a local theater. Kazaz credits his mother as his primary artistic influence. She took him to work and introduced him to the intricacies his artwork. She also bought art posters and hung them in their home, Another major influence was religious art. A highly Christian country, Armenians have long used Christianity as their cultural compass, and elements from its robust iconographical tradition manuscript illumination, tapestries, and laconic architectural forms, which have deep roots into Kazaz’s “aesthetic identity,” as well as the Armenian collective conscious. A very inventive storyteller, Kazaz blurs the distinction between drawing, painting, and sculpture. By its spontaneous nature, drawing is his most fluid activity, followed by sculpture, and then painting, which, more often than not, seems sculptural. Kazaz is also a master of emotional transparency. His animated gestures and atypical postures project internal thoughts as secondary props, i.e. building details, cups, hats, etc. add to pictorial succulence and multilayered translations. All of his works are dominated by atmosphere, color, and implication; with a twist of the brush, a dab of color , or glob of clay, he creates a nose, a questioning gaze, and/or personal with complicated social situations as tiny pieces of architectural detail, furniture, or landscape identify locations in which his participants read their lines, and life their lives