A conversation with Nay Azar on writing, painting, and the things that pull you toward something
I worked with Nay Azar multiple times in a screenwriting team, but I just had the pleasure to meet her one more time as a different person: a painter with complex layers that anyone would be curious to uncover. What follows is a conversation about the difference between the two mediums and the pull, toward something, that shows up in almost everything she makes.
Lightly edited for length and clarity. Nour Almoujabber's lines are marked NAM, Nay Azar's are marked NA.
Two Hands, One Source
Nour AlMoujabber. I want to start with something I didn't ask anyone else. I know you as a writer and a director, and finding out you paint surprised me. Walk me through these two sides of you, maybe more than two. What's the difference between you the writer and you the painter?
Nay Azar. I feel like there's one main essence that brings them together, which is the creative source itself. Whenever you have an idea, you can choose which outlet to put it into, writing, or images, or painting. I feel like they're all connected to the same place, just different hands reaching out to the public.
NAM. You're painting for someone to eventually see it. You do want the public to look at it.
NA. There's a difference between making something for yourself and making something you know is going to reach an audience. Once you know it'll reach people, something shifts.
NAM. So, you do have paintings nobody's ever seen?
NA. I have drawings people have never seen, writing too. Some are sketches I thought I might develop into something public later. But a lot of them are just personal, things I made when I didn't have a clear idea, just expressing something, and they can come out ugly, or unbalanced, or in colors that don't work.
NAM. How do you decide, in the moment, whether something you're making is going to stay private or go public?
NA. It's a very personal feeling. Even if I make something and keep it to myself, I feel like I've only let go of the feeling halfway, I didn't go all the way. I'll use a strange comparison, “vomiting”, you need to get it all the way out. Sometimes I decide to take that extra step, to let a piece go completely, out to an audience, because once it's out there, people bring their own interpretations to it, they identify with different things in it, and in that way, it stops being mine. I get rid of the feeling.
NAM. Which came first, writing or painting?
NA. Writing came first, painting followed. I called my parents about this at some point, because I felt lost about what my real talents even were, and I believe people's talents usually show up early, in childhood. I asked them, what did I do as a kid, what did I like. They told me I used to write a lot. Draw a lot. These outlets were there from the beginning, I just needed to work on them. But painting, at first, wasn't really a means of expression. It was more like designing, I used to draw a lot of women in different outfits, inventing their wardrobes. Then when I started taking it seriously, taking classes, it became more about technique, copying whatever painting was placed in front of me. […] There's one painting called Pain, two women facing each other, that was the first real one.
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Pain by Nay Azar
NAM. That was your first oil painting?
NA. First, or maybe second. That painting was the first time I asked my teacher if it was okay not to copy the exact colors in the reference image she'd given me. It started as just one woman. When I told him I wanted to change the colors to my own vision instead of copying hers, that was the moment something broke open, I started adding my own style instead of just copying.
On Medium
NAM. Which medium are you most comfortable in?
NA. Honestly, writing.
NAM. I meant specifically within painting.
NA. Watercolor is my go-to if I want something out quickly, or if I'm painting a landscape, or traveling, it's the most practical. Oil is something I'm deeply comfortable with because it takes so long to dry, I can work on it for a month, do something one day, take time off, come back to it. My oil paintings tend to be my favorites, because I know exactly how much time and how many changes went into them. Pastel was interesting too, it lets you use your hands directly, a totally different feeling, but I never loved that it's fragile, it can fall off the page even when you fix it properly. It just carries less weight than oil, to me. Oil is my favorite.
NAM. You mentioned change. Do you like watching a painting evolve? A lot of people avoid physical media entirely because once something's gone, it's gone, no undo button, no layers to fall back on the way you'd have digitally. How's your relationship with losing something you can't get back?
NA. That's a good question. Honestly, I think I'm okay with letting go. If something didn't work, I just leave it. Though it depends on the medium, with oil you can paint right over what's underneath and it still looks good, that's actually why oil feels like the middle ground to me, you get room to make changes, and that room is what gives a piece space to evolve over time. There's a real tension today between fast-paced, disposable art, and the kind of work that takes real time, and earns the weight of that time, the weight of an idea evolving, an emotion evolving. I think the longer a painting takes, the more weight it holds, at least for me. But with something like acrylic, if I truly can't get it back, maybe that's telling me something, maybe the idea wasn't meant to be, or it's a good exercise in asking myself if the idea is worth trying again.
NAM. You've decided to stop doing digital paintings going forward, is that right?
NA. For now, yes. Digital has a lot of practicality I genuinely like, but it's just different from an actual canvas, actual paint. If I imagine where my next paintings are going, I want them in homes, on the street, beautifying whatever space they're in, rather than just filling an empty wall. […] It becomes part of something moving part of life happening. Not, let's put a spotlight on this one painting so you can appreciate it properly.
On Storytelling and Letting Go
NAM. Do you plan a story before you paint, or does it come to you as you go? And separately, do you expect people looking at your work to see your story, or to build their own?
NA. I don't plan much storytelling, I do plan ideas, or concepts, so it stays fairly abstract for me. Sometimes it's an idea I want to give a visual to. Sometimes I go in through a feeling I want to express visually instead. And sometimes I just go in with no idea and no feeling at all, and let myself go completely, in those cases I think I'm seeking meditation out of the process rather than something I plan to share. Though if I do end up sharing it, people bring their own interpretations anyway, so it's not meaningless, just purposeless, in that specific instance. […] I've seen a lot of older paintings where the storytelling is so deliberate, a moment of grief, and every detail tells you something about the people grieving, the background says something, the foreground says something, the whole composition is doing narrative work. I don't think I've gone that far in my own paintings, except maybe in the one with the city and the girl flying above it.
NAM. She was reading inside the balloon, right?
NA. Yes. That one came from an actual feeling, wanting the whole piece to carry the sense that the city is alive, that we're safe, that there are people around, and then this girl who's flying because she wants her own time, her own calm, without removing the solid ground underneath her that she can always come back to.
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Fly Away, She Reads by Nay Azar
NAM. Is there a famous painting where you really noticed the storytelling at work?
NA. I forget names constantly, but there's an Instagram page, Paintings Explained. Every painting on there gets its own explanation, and you really feel the weight of the storytelling in each one, how it reflects the society it came from, which I don't think I tend to do in my own work.
[LINK: Painting Explained]
On Influences
NAM. Out of everyone, is there a painter whose work you genuinely admire?
NA. Edward Hopper. I still don't fully know why he's stuck with me, the one who painted Nighthawks.
Nighthawks (Edward Hopper, 1942)
NAM. Beautiful composition.
NA. He's incredible at capturing the feeling of a space. I also love Dalí, for the melting quality in his work. Some artists I admire for what they brought to painting as a field, and some just hit me personally, even when I can't explain why. Picasso, for example, I think he's genuinely courageous, revolutionary in how he approached painting, but I don't personally relate to the work itself, I just deeply respect it.
Forest (Emily Carr, 1931-32)
NA. Emily Carr was a really wonderful discovery for me this year, I'd never seen her work before, and it's incredibly spiritual, the kind of painting that goes through you without you knowing exactly why.
NAM. Was that from the Vancouver Art Gallery exhibition?
NA. Yes, a lot of her paintings genuinely moved me, there's some kind of spirit in them.
NAM. Have you ever thought about using existing paintings as allusion in your films, the way some directors do, like Lars von Trier using Ophelia's painting in Melancholia?
NA. I'd like to do that, actually, because of exactly that idea of allusion, using something that already exists inside your own work. It feels like the perfect way to bring attention back to art that already existed, to keep it alive again and again.
The Unfinished Medusa
NAM. Out of everything you've painted, is there one that was genuinely hard to make? Doesn't matter if it was technically hard, or emotionally hard.
NA. There's a drawing I started before coming to Canada, the head of Medusa, all the snakes. I loved the composition, I loved the concept behind it, but I just couldn't bring myself to put paint on it. I didn't want it to exist, for some reason, maybe because of what Medusa represents. It sat there, and I'd get myself ready to paint it, and then just wouldn't. That went on for a long time. I came to Canada, and I still haven't painted it, it's still sitting in Lebanon, unfinished. […] There was one other piece that was very emotional, the first time I didn't have any other outlet for what I was feeling. I started drawing and could see darkness coming out onto the page, and I kept adding lines, and adding lines, until I realized I was starting to draw into the piece itself, ruining it, but I still wanted the emotion out. It became this strange moment of choice, stop expressing and find another outlet if I didn't want to ruin it, or just let it be ruined and keep going. I stopped.
Aloneness and the Pull
NAM. What's the dominant emotion running through your paintings?
NA. It's aloneness, I'd say, rather than loneliness. And there's always a longing toward something underneath it.
NAM. There's something almost magnetic in your work, I keep noticing it, things rising toward something, or being pulled toward something. In Umbilical Cord, these two women held together by that connection. In Tree, the roots reaching down. In Rubedo, the woman transcending toward these planets.
NA. Even in Pain, she's being pulled from one side.
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Umbilical Cord by Nay Azar
NAM. You're an Arab woman, and an immigrant. Does that play into your work at all, beyond leaving an entire canvas behind in Lebanon?
NA. I never felt like there was something I wanted to express and couldn't, because I'm Arab, that's one thing to say clearly. But the immigration part was genuinely impactful. I did a series based on Jungian alchemy, Nigredo, Albedo, and Rubedo, three phases of transformation. Nigredo is the death of identity. Albedo is when you start purifying yourself, letting everything out. Rubedo is reintegrating into society.
NAM. I think we both went through some version of that after moving to Canada.
NA. I think everyone who immigrates goes through it, honestly. I used the series to process that whole unlearning, the identity crisis of who am I here, what do I want to leave behind, and how I integrated, or didn't, into this new culture. Making it was genuinely a catharsis.
NAM. If you could say something to Nay, the very first time she ever painted, what would you tell her, now, after all these years?
NA. I'd tell her to stick with it. She doesn't know yet the power of the cleansing that comes with painting, with any form of expression, or how the feelings doesn't get to build up inside you if you find a way to let it out. And what better way to let it out than a medium this beautiful, one other people can relate to. That also answers something you asked earlier whether I want people to see me in my work. I don't, honestly. I want them to see themselves in it, because that's the whole basis of art, we all carry the same feelings, they're universal. Once we realize we're all working from the same spectrum of feeling, the same kinds of experience, it becomes so much easier to just be yourself.
Prints of Nay Azar's work are available now on arabiyon.art.
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