Details:
① Artwork:
In Your Light I Learn
This work is part of a series of watercolor portraits that features explorers of inner space—people who can access other dimensions of being through orgasm, meditation and more. The figures in these works draw viewers into the composition, as they wonder how the world looks from the subject's point of view.
Faraj's paintings depict their subjects with tenderness—allowing the fullness of their presence and their worth to shine while acknowledging that no one is perfect. The artist's subjects may be friends or strangers, but they are all folks she wants to be with or be like. Faraj frequently celebrates members of the LGBTQI+ community in her works, exploring togetherness in diversity and featuring people in touch with their breath and permeable to the elements. The artist chooses subjects whose openness gives viewers the freedom to let down their own guards.
This watercolor was made using a wet-on-wet technique that allows pigments to move out of their original positions and blur the final image. This intentional dream-like effect symbolizes the shifting nature of perceptions and emotions. By breaking through the natural boundary of each figure, this technique also symbolizes the permeability we all have to one another. These paintings are made in the tradition of expressionism and neo-expressionist art with a debt to the Surrealists and other visionary artists.
Specs:
③ Artist:
Nadine Faraj’s watercolor paintings are portraits of sexualized figures in varying degrees of abstraction, often drawn from the worlds of pornography and erotica. The artist’s fluid style allows her figures to emerge as deeply psychological and emotional beings in compositions that depict a full sense of their humanity. Faraj’s work is suffused with raunchiness, humor, tenderness and soul, while simultaneously engaging with human rights, LGBTQI activism, feminism, and sex and body positivity.
Nadine Faraj was born in Montreal, Canada in 1977. The artist received an MFA from the New York City’s School of Visual Arts in 2015 and a BFA from Montréal's Concordia University in 2002.
Solo exhibitions of Faraj’s work include: Get Used to Us at Anna Zorina Gallery in New York City (2019); Ages Ago Every Cell In Your Soul Capsized Forever Into This Infinite Golden Sea at SPRING/BREAK Art Show in New York City (2019); Naked Revolt at Anna Zorina Gallery in New York City (2016); The Whole World Has Gone Joyously Mad at Galerie Joyce Yahouda in Montreal, Canada (2016); Miel Salé at Galerie Joyce Yahouda in Montreal, Canada (2013); and Beacon/Phare at Articule Gallery in Montreal, Canada (2010).
Group exhibitions that have shown Faraj’s work include: Believing You at SVA Galleries in New York City (2020); CURRENTS: Abortion at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, New York (2018); G.R.O.S.S. at Never Apart in Montreal, Canada (2017); Radical Love: Female Lust at Crypt Gallery in London, United Kingdom (2017); and The Dubai International Art Symposium in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (2008).
Faraj’s work has been reviewed in Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, Elephant Magazine, Huck Magazine, Art F City, CBC News, La Presse, Le Devoir, Gulf News and The Steidz. The artist’s watercolor painting from her Naked Revolt series was featured on the cover of A Woman’s Thing magazine.
Faraj lives and works between Montreal, Canada and New York City.
This painting, part of a series, depicts its subject with great tenderness—and whether a friend or a stranger, the subjects are always someone the artist would like to be with or be like. The artist intentionally chooses subjects whose openness gives viewers the freedom to let down their own guards.More
- Framed: 18.2 x 14.2 x 1.8 in.
- Signed
