We are still your trusted community:
ArtGirlRising and Repaint History is now
We are Liezel Strauss and Pegah Kargar, the founders of Rise & Repaint.
In March 2018, Pegah Kargar and Liezel Strauss launched Repaint History and ArtGirlRising respectively to address the underrepresentation of women artists in the art world.
Two ventures across the globe, unknown to one-another, with one shared goal.
After discovering each other's work, (spending hours on Zoom calls!) and realizing their shared mission, passion and vision for an inclusive art world
they joined forces to launch;
YOUR ART. OUR MISSION.
Together as one brand
Meet Our Founders
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Pegah Kargar
CO-FOUNDER
Pegah Kargar is an Iranian/Canadian social entrepreneur who founded Repaint History in 2018. Proficient in languages like English, Farsi, French, and a little bit of Spanish, Kargar comes from a world of finance. She was in the financial industry for more than a decade when she decided to shift gears and enter the world of art. Since then, Kargar has been an advocate for female and non-binary artists and has raised her voice for their right to equal representation.
Pegah is a seasoned entrepreneur and product leader with a background in business strategy design, growth, P&L management, digital strategies. She has extensive experience working in large matrix organizations and stakeholder management.
In 2018 Pegah founded Repaint History to bring recognition to forgotten female artists of the past. It was also a movement addressing gender gap in the art world, a community to empower women artists and a voice for change and progress to bring.
Pegah lives in Toronto with her husband and son and when she’s not advocating for gender equality in the art world, she is tending to her beautiful wild garden.
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Liezel Strauss
CO-FOUNDER
Co-founder of Subject Matter & Rise and Repaint (formerly ArtGirlRising)
Liezel co-founded Subject Matter in 2011 in Tokyo, as one of the first online art galleries. Subject Matter is now based in London and Cape Town, helping clients build their art collections in an accessible way. Clients and partners include Fora, Hyundai, Hilton, Soho House, Selfridges and The Royal College of Art.
In 2018 Liezel co-founded ArtGirlRising and in 2020 WATWA (Where Are The Women Artists?) to challenge the inequalities that exists in the art world.Through this work Liezel was named one of the UN Women's top 100 female innovators worldwide. In 2019 she was selected to represent the UN Women 'Impossible to Ignore' campaign to advocate for gender equality in the arts.
Liezel lives in Houtbay, Cape Town with her husband, son and two boy cats where she is also the co-founder of LUMI a women's co-working space and gallery, a community project close to her heart.
Nobody Says Picasso: The Male Artist
- Patti Smith
Watch more of our story here
Rise and Repaint (previously known as ArtGirlRising and Repaint History) is part of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Social Venture Zone (SVZ), an incubator for Social Enterprises.
We are so incredibly grateful to SVZ for all their support, time and input.
