Swaying Smoke & Sizzling Sounds - Featuring Naveed Majid

Naveed Majid grew up in an industrial home and recalls playing with tools as a distinct memory. After completing his training in print making, he now experiments with multiple different mediums. What caught my eye recently were his aggressively violent, even ghostly images of nature.

Majid is inherently conscious of the environment. Partly because he grew up around mechanical objects that felt intriguing to his developing mind. Which is what probably led to him exploring the birth of machines and their impact on nature. His paintings mostly appear loud, with a certain piercing quality to them. It’s like you can hear the crackling of wood under a ghastly fire.

One of his recent works, ‘The sun is coming up’ is one of such pieces. Where you can almost imagine hearing the tree cry. Its leaves replaced by smoke. Its shadow blue as a ghost. Its wood, burnt red. The wiggling branches look like arms swaying for help. The glowing sun in the background feels like boiling the earth with heat. Everything dancing in the hot haze. Just like the horizon in a hot endless desert.

Breathe In Breathe Out is another loud image. The tree trunk almost resembling a chimney puffing out massive smoke from above. Loud colors mimic the hottest spectrum on a heat map. The enlarged tree exceeds the canvas as if just another degree hotter would cause an explosion. I love how he leaves furiously scribbled pastels all over the canvas, in an attempt to reach the viewer. It's as if he wants you to be furious too. He wants to make you feel the discomfort.

My personal favorite piece at the end. This painting is titled ‘Midnight’. I love the auditory quality of each piece, but this one left me mesmerized. There is an eerie but calming sound. The tree, like all his trees, feels animated. The grass, like all his surroundings, feels swaying. And even in the dark of the night, you see the beautiful grassfield plagued by mechanical intervention. The straight lines of light green grass somehow disrupt the naturally chaotic wilderness of the field. The tree looks like a shade of painful melancholy. Nature feels invaded, even under the magical night-light.

Majid is one of those artists who will catch your attention from afar. His artwork may not sit with every passing eye, but if you’re remotely sensitive, you’ll hear sounds, you’ll smell smoke, you’ll feel a hot flash, and you’ll absorb the overflowing energy for sure!