British-Iranian artist Hana Shahnavaz got an unusual request from the makers of a major US TV series - to create special images for the title sequence.
Producers of spy thriller The Old Man asked her to make a different artwork for each episode, with clues about the show's themes and characters hidden in Persian miniatures.
After signing an NDA she made seven pieces for designers based around two Jackals who embark on a journey across oceans facing monsters, and shapeshifting. Based on a book of fables dating back to second-century India, it subtly mirrors the story of Geoff Bridge's absconded former CIA agent, who is flushed out of hiding and goes on the run when his past catches up with him.
"They got in touch through my website and explained their vision," says the artist who lives between Highgate and Crouch End, and specialises in large scale paintings depicting stories from her Iranian heritage.
"It's set in the US but unfolds as an historic narrative of what happened in his past in Afghanistan. The writer and producers had a vision for a symbolic hidden story unravelling alongside each episode, like its own little world within the title sequence. My own work is very story based. I use art as a medium to tell stories, and this was a story within a story." .
Co-directed by Spider-Man No Way Home's Jon Watts, with writer-producer John Steinberg, the FX series will stream on Disney+ later this year.
"It was a big challenge but I loved working with the design team to bring their story to life and give form to abstract ideas. Traditional Persian art has so many meanings within stories. People seeing the work might not know what it relates to, but it will make them think and try to figure it out."
Shahnavaz, who makes her own paints from rocks and minerals collected from all over the world, is exhibiting at Saatchi Gallery this October . After graduating in Persian studies from SOAS, she moved to Iran to study traditional music but "ended up falling into art".
"I was surrounded by visual beauty and I had found my thing," she says. She studied at The Prince's Foundation School of Traditional Arts in London, where she won an end of year prize and sold her work to Malaysia's Islamic Museum. Since then she has gained exposure internationally and says of her large scale pieces of 2x1.5 metres "you can connect with them on different levels".
"The centrepiece will be the whole story and you can be blown away from standing at a distance, but within that are side pieces and as you go closer you find layers within layers."
Shahnavaz started out using traditional materials of earth and paper, but found they had a limited palette, and now paints on canvas adding "interesting new pigments" to her paints including Swarovski crystals. In the installation for The Tree of All Seeds, she also weaves her own characters and stories into traditional Persian tales to express her concerns about the climate crisis.
"Look deep into ancient human societies and we all lived at one with nature, connected to plants and animals," she says. "Climate is important, as is reconnecting back to nature, we can heal ourselves and we can heal the earth.
"I want to make art that is contemporary. I'm recycling gorgeous old imagery but talking about something that's relevant now. I have to do it in a positive way because I shut down if faced with scary, sad, pessimistic things so I talk about sad, dark, matters in an uplifting way: 'Come on plant a seed. Let's do this.'"