Monotony and Mathematics have a strong relationship in nature. The former authenticates reassurance while the latter substantiates balance.
Flower has a language of patters. These patterns appear again and again in a certain order and proportion, which mirrors truth relevant to all forms of
life. 
Mona Naqsh
For their final exhibition for 2009, Twelve Gates Gallery is featuring recent paintings by Mona Naqsh, an accomplished Pakistani painter whose father Jamil Naqsh is considered to be the only living Pakistani modern master artist. Mona Naqsh received no official academic training in painting and instead studied underneath her father, developing her personal aesthetic in an environment that gave her free range to explore and understand her visual interests.
Naqsh has created a niche for herself by being one of the few Pakistani artists to take flowers as her subject, specifically the still-lifes she creates by arranging wild flowers in either porcelain or crystal vases. Her floral portraits are filled with the vibrancy of life the actual flowers contained when first placed within their companion vases. Naqsh has generated her own uniquely meticulous technique through the act of creation that endows her images with an ethereal quality. Her oil paintings on canvas reveal the full range of her technical abilities. The above floral portrait of orange-hued blossoms cascading up and out of a wide, circular crystal vase is a prime example of her dreamlike compositions. Petals and leaves are delicately painted with flowing strokes that create a free-form sense of being and movement; the flowers appear both part of and yet apart from our world. The crystal vase stands in stark contrast to the natural depiction of the flowers, whose crisp lines mimic the way light reflects off of the infinite facets on its exterior. The table and cloth the vase rests upon are not as crisply delineated; their subtle shades and lines are akin to the otherworldly expression of the blossoms exploding forth from the painting.
Texture is prominent is her canvas paintings through the layering of colors and juxtaposition of techniques applied to flowers and vase. The painting above is one of a few where space is virtually non-existent. In all of Naqsh's floral portraits the emphasis is on the arrangement, which encompasses the entire picture plane, and the space it is set within is secondary, at least delineated by a line separating ground from wall. Here, while the reflection of light from the vase gives a sense of a ground, the background space is filled with a textural gradient of color that flattens the plane, pushing the floral arrangement to the front of the picture and making it pop outward. Yet the floral arrangement remains connected to the background because of the textural technique applied to the flowers' depiction.
By contrast, her paintings on paper have a crisp clarity born out of Naqsh's methodical application of line and color. Her eye for detail comes to the fore in her depiction of light, such as the reflection off of the porcelain vase onto the bare table, and the shape and form of blossoms and veined leaves that spring forth and droop out of their container. In these images color is at its most vibrant, and the flowers are almost painfully bright with their luminosity. It is intriguing that her images on paper feature porcelain vases while her canvas paintings contain the crystal ones.
Yet it is the sole ink pen drawing that stands apart from and above the other images. Primarily black and white with a few subtle additions of color at the neck of the glass vase and within the heart of the flowers, this is a composition unique from Naqsh's other ones. The floral arrangement is still prominently at the center, but the surrounding space has taken a more conspicuous position as part of the composition. A window, from which light filters through, can be distinguished in the upper left corner of the image. The diagonal ray of light strikes the flowers and a column in the back right of the interior, a ghostly architectural presence that adds depth to the space. There is more movement here than in any other piece, from the diagonals of the light and verticals of the column to the directions of Naqsh's strokes as she built up the forms and contrast. This interior is her most developed one, but she also plays with abstracting it. The space is broken up into rectangular areas as if she drew the image piece-meal, focusing on one small area before moving on to the next, so there is little cohesion to the physical space which results in a flattening effect. Of course, the floral arrangement is where Naqsh truly shines, and while the background is dynamic and intriguing your eye is drawn back again and again to the delicate petals that cling to their source, faces open and reaching up and out to the light.