Nargis Naqvi | A Moment of Release

Nargis Naqvi is a Canadian-based painter whose work reflects heritage, womanhood, faith, and lived experience. Born in Ireland, raised in Saudi Arabia, educated in the United States, and now based in Canada, her cross-cultural life shapes the stories she tells through art. Drawing on Pakistani roots, Saudi upbringing, and Western education, she creates paintings centered on memory, identity, belonging, and the quiet strength of women.
Working in painting, mixed media, acrylic, oil, and spray paint, Nargis builds layered surfaces rich with texture, color, and symbolism. Her practice is intuitive and deeply personal, inspired by fabric, patterns, nature, and spiritual reflection. She is drawn to resilience, stillness, and the unspoken emotions carried within the body and heart.
Her current work explores home, displacement, and inner grounding, while celebrating bright florals and figurative imagery that bring warmth, curiosity, and connection

 

In A Moment of Release, I painted a woman finding a place where she can be with her own thoughts — to center herself, calm her nerves, and talk to her heart and her Lord. I wanted to create a moment of stillness where nature becomes grounding and faith becomes uplifting. For me, this painting is about the quiet strength that comes from turning inward and upward at the same time.
The woman in this piece is not escaping the world; she is creating a space within it where she can breathe, reflect, and reconnect with herself. She finds that even when she is far from home, and even when she feels the ache of missing it, nature and faith remain with her. They become the things that steady her and remind her that she can belong anywhere. That idea is deeply personal to me, because it speaks to how I have learned to carry grounding with me through life’s changes.
For this exhibition, I hope the viewer sees this work as a reflection of my past, the faith that I carried with me regardless of home, emotions I worked through while moving forward in life and finding solace in the stillness I find in nature.