Qadira: Abstract Figurative Painting

Qadira: abstract painting of a strong, capable woman radiating limitless power and quiet femininity

$5,000.00

About Qadira

"Qadira is a strong and capable (Arabic meaning) woman. With limitless power and femininity."

Qadira does not ask permission. Her name means capable, and she wears it the way other women wear jewellery: openly, without apology. She holds her ground in black and gold against a field of deep pink, her gaze steady and direct, meeting yours before you have decided whether to look.

She is not the portrait of one woman. She is every woman who has been told she is too much, too loud, too ambitious, and carried on regardless. Her strength is not armour. It sits beside her softness, her colour and her ornament, because Qadira refuses the idea that a woman has to choose between being powerful and being beautiful.

Hamsa hands float around her, an eye at the centre of each, an old protective symbol across the Middle East and North Africa. They do not hover over a woman who needs protecting. They surround one who already holds her own power.

Hang her where you will pass her every day. She is there to remind you what you are capable of. Where Qadira carries the strength that refuses to shrink, Nimer carries the strength that protects. The two hold a wall beautifully together. Take both and the second piece is 10% off, applied automatically at checkout.

An artwork from the "Reality Eclipsed" collection

Every person carries a second self, the one who says the thing out loud, who does not shrink, who is not managing anyone else's comfort. Most of us keep that self folded away. The figures in this collection are those selves let out. They are not portraits of people the artist has met. They are what a trait looks like when it stops apologising: strength without permission, loyalty without noise, tenderness that refuses to be mistaken for weakness.

She paints them at full volume, pattern layered on pattern until the background stops behaving and starts answering them. That is where the collection takes its name. Reality does not disappear, it is eclipsed, pushed briefly behind something larger. She hopes whoever lives with one of these works recognises a little of their own hidden self in it, and treats that self more generously.