From 1980 to date, Raza has been constructing paintings, which have not only colour and form as a major pre-occupation, but also signs and symbols of Indian iconography. He deals with themes which Indian sources have revealed to him, like Tam Shunya, Bindu Nad, Panchatatva, Maa (the motherland) and visions of Rajasthan and Saurashtra. He also deals with the concept of Time and Space where in the Hindu Dhrishti, Time is depicted by a point with concentric circles around it and space is represented by a square surrounded by larger squares to depict expanse.

Some of his favourite themes have been Linga and Yoni - the male and female polarities and Prakriti, the concept of the central force which constitutes our world and the other worlds.
Raza says his paintings are not abstract and there is a thematic content in them, even though the main concern is the organization of space in colour and the orchestration of form in space. It is an introspective and meditative journey that is as autobiographical as it is the exploration of that which is beyond comprehension. He is both 'Rasa' and 'Rasika' and takes both himself and the viewer into a meditative experience through the abstraction of his own perception. Colour plays an important part in Raza's work, with its vibrance and full-blooded delight. He uses it to express all the Ragas and Rasas known to human experience. It expresses love, tension, antagonism, harmony, day and night and peace. 'Shanti' has been a theme which has obsessed him for the last four or five years. He aimed at a pure icon, which could be an image of peace - a space for meditation. This is the motif he used when designing a poster on peace for UNESCO.

In his latest paintings, he has used only two colours - black and white, the basic essentials of darkness and light. The works entitled 'Shanti Bindu' and 'Jagruti' are examples of efforts in this direction. In the early years, his quest for the essential led him to use the purest geometrical forms with colour. Now it goes beyond that to discard all colours except Black and White. Black to him constitutes all the colours of the spectrum.
He says that he has always worked by inner necessity rather than from an obsession with external beauty and has achieved a balanced way of living and working, remaining unperturbed by enormous success, just as he used to be when his work was not widely appreciated. He remains a man of this world and yet distant from it.