Nahid Raza is an artist of distinction, one who received her first national recognition and award in 1983. Since that time, she has been a prolific painter showing her work throughout the country and further afield, always creating a fresh dialogue with her audience through constant experimentation and joy in the media. Painting is a way of life for the artist, each day celebrated with a narrative of colour. On every occasion, her work leads the audience to rediscover a piquant visual relationship.
The exhibition of recent work by Raza held at the Canvas Gallery, Karachi, is unmistakably the art of a mature painter, the one who creates her own aesthetic rules. The finesse of the emotional expression in the work is infinitely moving in its appeal. She describes the display as an expression of her feelings. Symbolic in the imagery is the woman’s presence that represents loneliness but also hopes for the future, 'whatever life holds, there is always a ray of happiness there’.
Exploring a painting titled, ‘Pages of my diary’ each word is a tiny pearl. “Though darkness may fill one’s thoughts, one discovers also colours of joy breaking through just as the dawn breaks through the darkness of night,” she states.
Raza’s personal motifs are the outcome of feminine conventions, making connections that are often portrayed with abstraction. Raised in a family of artists and writers, the artist pays homage to her mother who taught her children the creed passed through generations of women, “always keep a coin in the house and money will bring money.” In the latest body of work there are several canvases patterned with a collection of coins against a textured background, a homily, amusing presence that leavens the thoughtful series of work.
Raza has, through the years, represented the women’s point of view with humour, wit and defiance in collections such as ‘I’m not a Peacock; I’m a woman’ in a vocation that earned her the President’s Pride of Performance in 2007.
An artwork titled, ‘Three stories’ shows the imagery of three women; together yet looking in different directions. The painting acts as a suggestion that every woman has a story within her, though one may seem free of care, each has private personal feelings that may not be shared.
‘A door in my heart’, has a patchwork of vibrant colour enclosed within a dark, heavily textured background. Each of the artist’s paintings offers an intriguing opportunity to the viewer to make a story of their own. The layered surfaces possess an expressive paint quality with a message that is both vigorous and lyrical. Raza’s artwork is essentially self referential as she examines her own role in life and persona as an artist.
Currently the principal of the Arts Council Central Institute of Arts and Crafts, she is delighted in discovering the nascent talent of her students, as always an encouraging influence on the young and struggling newcomers to art. Busy as she undoubtedly is, she takes time for herself to muse, to meditate and explore her own inner feelings in the changing times.