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Step inside the online home of Brazilian-American visual artist Naza, based in South Florida. Explore a vibrant, extensive world of original contemporary oil paintings on canvas, exclusive one-of-a-kind freehand digital fine art, and striking portraiture built upon a 50-year artistic journey.
We invite you to browse through our comprehensive galleries, discover museum-quality giclée prints, explore her biography and environmental advocacy, and experience the full depth of Naza's creative universe across every page.
I am infatuated with the synergy of opposing views. To explore this, I consciously pit abstraction against realism, allowing them to coexist and collide within a single work.
In my oil paintings, I work from both directions. I may begin with a purely abstract field and gradually coax out recognizable forms—elements of nature, events, or living beings. Other times, I start with a sharp realism and, while the paint is still wet, I aggressively abstract it. My goal is to capture not just a subject, but the visceral energy of its interaction with the environment. Each artwork is not just a static image; it is an "event."
My physical process is one of precision and optical depth. While my oil paintings possess a subtle, minimal physical texture, I use light and shadow to amplify this surface, creating the illusion of much deeper, more rugged terrain. By mastering the contrast between the actual paint and the perceived depth, I make the work appear far more textured than it is—inviting the viewer to question the boundary between the physical canvas and the visual experience.
This philosophy carries over seamlessly into my digital works. Through my proprietary DNA Process, I choose a small area from a photo of an existing painting of mine, bring it into the computer, and develop a whole new abstract painting inspired by that detail—as if it were a child of the painting. I then create a separate realistic digital painting. By combining these two distinct abstract and realistic works, I establish a foundational base. From that point, I dedicate half of my process to painting over and synthesizing the final work entirely by hand. Using virtual brushes, I meticulously select the pressure, transparency, and shape of every stroke, rejecting automatic filters, glows, and shadows to build the image from the ground up.
What is Abstracted Realism?
Pioneered by contemporary visual artist Naza during the 1990s, Abstracted Realism is an original fine art movement that bridges precise, high-contrast realism with spontaneous, evocative abstract depth. Rather than treating realism and abstraction as opposing forces, this style merges them into a single visual language where tangible subjects—such as human portraits, wildlife, and figures—dissolve into fractured planes, stardust energy, and rich textural layers. Every piece stands as a testament to capturing the deep emotional essence of living things through light, shadow, and uncompromised freehand mastery across nearly 50 years of professional creation.
In September 1995, my studio was the site of a unique historical event: the first-ever art commission in the History of the Internet. Documented by the Sun-Sentinel during the web's earliest days, this milestone marked the moment a traditional oil painting was born from a digital connection—a bridge between classical fine art and the emerging technology of the future.