Born in Afghanistan is a visual artist who graduated from Art Academy of Sint Petersburg, a renowned Russian academy. Since 1996 He lives and works in the Netherlands.

In addition, he has trained as a teacher at the Amsterdam School for the Arts (Hoge School van Kunsten).It is remarkable that a young man such as Aref Damee should feel attracted at a very young age to figurative art, given his culture; it seems as if he feels no need to pay any debt to his origins. At an early age he established an art association in his native Afghanistan. He was invited to train in Russia, with the intention of returning to his family. But sadly they had already fled, his father had been murdered, and he had lost his home. His family fled to the Netherlands, and he followed later.

His method of painting can best be compared with The Hague School, with perfect technique and composition. He is a realistic figurative artist with a somewhat impressionistic streak. Painting is for him more than a record of what the eye sees; revealing passion, his innermost feelings are processed in a subtle way without being immediately obvious. In this way he recollects the old masters who also added personal details to their paintings. But most important of all is his technique. In this point he is radically different from the current trend in which emotion takes the lead.

His technique is a combination of composition and the use of color; the whole must be in balance. In his view, if this is not correct, the whole creation will collapse like a house of cards.