In the ‘Rainbow’ works, over the abstract landscape grounds, can be found all manner of marks, suggestive of the building blocks of human life–blood and bodily fluids forming and growing from the moment of conception to the moment of birth and on to life beyond the womb. The birth of a child, Afshar’s paintings suggest, is analogous to the birth of the universe, to life itself. Just as light entered the darkness, energy, waves and particles formed the physical universe that we experience through the spark of life, through consciousness.