MY WORK
I am drawn to the quiet space where sky meets land—where stillness holds both presence and possibility. Through contemporary abstract painting and mixed media, I explore the horizon not simply as a line in the distance, but as an emotional and contemplative space: a place of pause, transition, connection, and return.
The Arabic phrase بين السماء والأرض (Bayna as-samā’ wa al-’arḍ), meaning “between the sky and the earth,” guides my Horizon Series. The phrase speaks to an in-between space shaped by uncertainty and hope—a space that feels both expansive and deeply familiar. In my work, the horizon softens and expands, allowing land, water, sky, light, and color to dissolve into one another. I am interested in the moments when a landscape becomes more than a view and begins to hold memory, emotion, and a sense of belonging.
My Colorful Horizons series extends this exploration through a more expressive language of color. Layered geometric lines create movement, rhythm, and depth, guiding the eye across vibrant fields of color. These works explore how color can shift our emotional experience of place, inviting energy, connection, and possibility while remaining rooted in the contemplative nature of the horizon.
My process is both intuitive and intentional. I build and reduce layers of paint, paper, texture, and color until each work settles into a sense of balance. Layers are revealed and concealed over time, echoing the way memory and emotion surface—sometimes clearly, sometimes in fragments. Negative space is essential to this process. It allows the work to breathe and creates room for the viewer to pause and enter the painting.
My Yemeni-American background and experiences across different cultures and landscapes have deepened my interest in how places shape memory and belonging. Influenced by minimalist Japanese aesthetics, I am drawn to simplicity, restraint, balance, and the quiet power of what is left unsaid.
My work does not seek to replicate a particular place. Instead, I translate the feeling of being there—the calm of an open horizon, the stillness of air, the shifting light, and the memory a place leaves behind.
Ultimately, I create visual sanctuaries for stillness, connection, and memory of place—spaces where viewers can pause, reflect, and perhaps find something familiar within the unfamiliar.
BIO
Nuha Moretz is a Yemeni-American contemporary visual artist whose practice explores abstract horizons, nature, memory, and stillness. Working across Utah and North Carolina, she creates minimalist, horizon-inspired paintings as visual sanctuaries for reflection, connection, and a sense of possibility.
Her artistic perspective was shaped early in Tokyo, Japan, where she developed an appreciation for simplicity, balance, restraint, and negative space. These influences continue to inform her approach to abstraction, where subtle shifts in color, light, texture, and form evoke the quiet experience of being in and remembering a place.
Her Horizon Series is at the center of her practice, exploring the horizon as both a landscape and a metaphor—a space between land and sky, presence and memory, and where we are and where we might go. Her Colorful Horizons series extends this exploration through more expressive color, energy, and light.
Moretz holds an M.A. in International Studies as a Fulbright Scholar and previously worked across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East in education reform and gender equity. These international experiences continue to shape the global perspective and sense of place within her art.
Influenced by minimalist Japanese aesthetics and artists including Mark Rothko and Agnes Martin, Moretz creates work that invites viewers to pause, reflect, and reconnect with themselves and the natural world.
Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in private collections.