To the extent that I can be said to have had an artistic career it began in Tokyo in 1969-71 when my wife and I learned woodblock printing with Fr. Gaston Petit and through that experience absorbed some elements of the Japanese aesthetic, including a taste for subdued colours and natural textures. My decision to “get serious” about painting was made living in Amman, Jordan, 1984-85, where, for the first time in decades, both the job and the temporary family configuration left me with unaccustomed leisure time. A year or two later I had the good fortune to take a painting class from Geraldine Robarts in Nairobi. Through her I was exposed to a much more exuberant aesthetic and a love of colour and of watercolours as my medium of choice.
My interest in painting Middle Eastern structures and cityscapes was triggered many years later, again in Jordan, during a visit to the ancient town of Salt (no relative of the condiment we eat with pepper but the possible root of the word “Sultana”, the grape thought to have originated there). Salt is situated a half hour drive from Amman and spans three of the Jordan Valley’s steep “side wadis”. It possesses a remarkable collection of 19th century homes and public buildings constructed in a beautiful yellow stone according to an elegant style that originated in the Palestinian town of Nablus.
From Salt it was logical that I turn to Amman, a modern city which, from a painter’s perspective, is greater than the sum of its parts. Amman’s steep hills and its unremarkable, close packed buildings constitute a cubist experiment on a colossal scale, especially in the late afternoon when shadows form and its chunky mass of buildings turns gold in the light of the setting sun.
In the last four years I’ve visited Jerusalem a half dozen times and that sad city’s ancient stones and edgy people constitute an endless source of inspiration. I’ve done over a dozen paintings of the Dome of the Rock, Islam’s oldest and, for my money, most beautiful building. I enjoy the contrast between the dome’s structural simplicity and its opulent decoration and the dance it does with the nearby minarets as your perspective shifts while you move around Jerusalem’s Old City.
