At the heart of my practice is a reverence for process, material, and memory. I work with natural pigments, coaxing colour from the earth through slow, deliberate methods. These pigments are more than colour: they are geography, history, and lineage. They link landscapes and generations through shared material memory. My work blends traditional craft with a contemporary sensibility while remaining faithful to historical methods of pigment and paint-making. I craft colour from minerals, sulphur-rich lapis for blue, mercury-bright cinnabar for vermilion, copper-bearing malachite for green, refining them into paint with depth and nuance. Much of my research centres on the pigments of Pakistan, mapping its diverse geological palette and tracing mineral histories. As I work, material becomes memory, colour becomes a record of place, shaped by earth and history. Each colour carries the weight of its terrain, transforming land into line, texture, and tone. In an age of synthetic colour and instant image, I’m drawn to substances shaped by time; materials that resist uniformity and carry the story of their origin. Their unpredictability demands a slower pace, and with it, deeper attention, reminding me to stay with the process. Rooted in nature and its infinite wonders, my work seeks to sustain the fragile knowledge embedded in material traditions; not to preserve them unchanged, but to understand how they might continue to speak in new contexts. Making, for me, is a form of listening: staying present while carrying histories forward, keeping them heard, felt, and relevant, remaining true to the stories we carry.
