Fatemeh Burnes was born in Tehran. She first came to the United States in 1973, spent a five-year period between three continents, and settled in Southern California in 1977. Classically trained in Persian art and verse (she was mentored by her uncle, poet Salek Esfahani, and was featured on several radio programs devoted to poetry), Burnes also studied biology, modern Persian poetry, and western artistic practice – including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, art history, and exhibition design – in Iran, Europe, and ultimately in California, where she received her BFA and MFA in art and art history.
Burnes has taught fine arts, design, and art history at California State University Fullerton, the Art Institute of Southern California (now the Laguna College of Art and Design), Saddleback College, Fullerton College, and the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandise (FIDM). She also led special programs in public art, which resulted in the creation of murals dealing with environmental themes, and has taught plein-air painting internationally.
Since 1992 Burnes has served as gallery director and curator as well as full-time professor of drawing and design at Mt. San Antonio College, focusing in particular on art education and curriculum development in exhibition organization and design. At the gallery she has curated over 100 exhibitions, authored numerous publications, conducted art-education documentaries, and worked with an international array of artists and art professionals. She has exhibited her own work extensively since the 1980s.
Since re-emerging in 2009 with new bodies of work in painting and photography, Burnes has earned the attention of top critics and curators in Southern California and has gained national and international recognition. In January 2012 Zero+ Publishing released drift, a book of Burnes’ photographs, edited by critic and writer Peter Frank; and in March 2013 she published a 220-page full-color catalogue, Imprints of Nature and Human Nature, to accompany a solo exhibition at Mt. San Antonio College celebrating her two decades with the school. She has also exhibited at the Municipal Arts Gallery in Los Angeles, the Sturt Haaga Gallery of the Descanso Gardens in La Cañada-Flintridge, and at George Gallery in Laguna Beach (a one-person show). Her exhibitions have been reviewed in publications such as art ltd, ArtScene, and the Huffington Post. Burnes is currently featured in Trans Angeles, a traveling exhibition curated by Peter Frank for the Wilhelm-Morgner-Haus in Soest, Germany. A domestic version of the exhibition is slated for 2016.