000 / 012 List of Works

001Self Portrait II, 2025Acrylic on canvas
16.5 x 11.6 in
© Maryam Shehzad

This self-portrait captures a position familiar to many, in front of a screen, FaceTiming or messaging. I painted myself in a moment of quiet connection, simultaneously here and elsewhere.

002
New Yorker, 2025Oil on canvas
12 x 9 in x 41 cm
© Maryam Shehzad

We often jokingly refer to my brother as “The New Yorker" because of how frequently he begins his stories with, “I was reading in The New Yorker...” which immediately makes us roll our eyes. I enjoyed painting this portrait of him as I felt it fittingly captured the way my family sees him each time he cites his favorite source.

003Novel, 2025Oil on canvas
9 x 12 in
© Maryam Shehzad

My brother working on his novel. I have read many drafts of his novel, and he refers to me as his “first reader.” Whenever we ask him on a family FaceTime call, what his weekend plans are, he replies with a sigh, “Bus… reading, writing.” My parents often tease him, “Kab arahi hai tumhari novel?” They often ask me how it is and what it is about. When he sat for me for this painting, he asked if it was okay if he could work on his novel while I painted. When the painting was complete, I showed it to my parents on FaceTime and asked them what I should call it. My dad quickly said, “Novel!”

003 Broken and Sliced, 2025Oil on canvas
11 x 16 in
© Maryam Shehzad

004Aag Lagi Basti Mein, Hum Apni Masti Mein, 2025Acrylic on canvas
11 x 16 in
© Maryam Shehzad

This portrait, which started as an attempt to explore quick rough strokes to paint a reader in his library, ended up as something completely different. Mid way into this painting, I stepped back before sketching the bookshelves in the background, I was caught offguard by how much the fiery orange underpainting contrasted the blissful reader in the forefront. A much more apt background for our times. So much chaos and tragedy around us, but we keep our complacent heads down, ignoring everything, minding our own business. As the Urdu saying goes: Aag Lagi Basti Mein, Hum Apni Masti Mein.

005Munching, 2024Oil on canvas
16 x 20 in
© Maryam Shehzad

Munching as we would call it when we were growing up. A reluctance to commit to a plate and just walking around with chips in our hands. I have tried to capture that in this painting: the motion of our hands and the notion of munching. The person munching is not visible so we don’t know if it is worried munching or happy munching.

006Self-Portrait I, 2024Acrylic on canvas
16 x 20 in
© Maryam Shehzad

I use my phone too much, but i have been painting more and more recently. I have tried to become better at painting hands, and what is more obvious when using our phones than our hands.

007Whinging, 2023Acrylic on canvas
22 x 29 in
© Maryam Shehzad

On the morning of Charles’s coronation, I cooked turkey keema as my brother sat on the kitchen counter and read out loud a New Yorker article on why Charles is so unlikeable. “Charles’s main issue is that he is such a roondu,” I sighed out loud as I stir fried the onions and chillies. We both agreed and then got into a discussion on what English word captured the essecnce of the Urdu word roondu. It is isn’t whining but something more deeper, when a person is so vocally miserable about their (non)situation that others feel compelled to not care. Apparently this is an issue that Charles’s biographers have also faced: how to explain his roondu-ness. In a London Review of Books essay called “Puffed up, Slapped Down,” Rosemary Hill writes: “It would be easier to feel sorry for Charles if he didn’t feel so intensely and publicly sorry for himself. One of the British words Smith [Charles’s Biographer] has to explain to her American readers is ‘whinging’.” I am not completely sold if whinging is the same as being a roondu but I liked how the word ended with a double “ing.” I decided to paint it in a way similar to when the printer registration is off and you get a bad print. I am hoping the viewers of this painting will make the same face when they see this off-registered text as they would when they are stuck in a conversation with a roondu whininging.

007Unday Ka Funda, 2022Acrylic on canvas
20 x 16 in
© Maryam Shehzad

What do you see in this painting? Viewers noted (in no particular order): a face; an unimpressed, or maybe shock suppressing, expression; a face behind another face; a spatula about to scoop up an over medium egg on a frying pan; the afternoon sun viewed from the windows of an airplane. This is an acrylic painting and the big and bold letters spell egg. The Urdu title Unday Ka Funda tranlsates to “The Concerns of the Egg.”

008Sunny ‘88, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
28 x 22 in
© Maryam Shehzad

009
Lakeer Kay Fakeer , 2021Acrylic on canvas
22 x 29 in
© Maryam Shehzad

“Lakeer Kay Fakeer” is an Urdu phrase which means a person who does not accept change and is bound to the lakeer: the straight line, the process, or the old ways. But life isn’t a straight line and we have to accept change. A friend asked me to design an album art inspired by this phrase a few years ago. The song never released (I hope it does soon!) so I forgot about this graphic. But recently I’ve been thinking about how, without realizing, I’ve been on a path that’s expected of me and I decided to paint this to inspire me to be brave enough to not be a lakeer ka fakeer.

© Maryam Shehzad