Rose Issa Projects, 82 Great Portland Street, London W1

A further image from Rose Issa Art Projects closing show at  82 Great Portland Street, London W1.

Paintings at Rose Issa Art Projects

Pictures from Egypt and Morocco exhibited in their carriers

Cairo- a view from the Citadel, looking south, Oil on card, 16 x 11 cm

Cairo- little Coptic church near the press agency, oil on card, 12 x 8.5 cm

Taroudant, gates, oil on card, 12.5 x 12.5 cm

Paintings on exhibition at Rosre issa Art projects,Great Portland Street, London.

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Many thanks to my beautiful friend, Lise Colyer,  for these photos.

Stephen Walton Fine Art; galleries and dealers

Red, yellow and pink flowers, oil on card, 14.5 x 18 cm

Flowers, oil on card, 18 x 15 cm

 Chrysanthemums, oil on card, 13 x 13 cm

Yachts, Coney island, N.Y, oil on card, 15.5 x 11.5 cm

A Chinese Restaurant, East Village, N.Y, oil on card, 11.5 x 14 cm

Washington Square, Manhattan, N.Y., oil on card, 13.5 x 14.5 cm

These are six paintings selected by Stephen Walton for his gallery.

 He will be acting as a dealer for me in England. He is based in Bury, and can be contacted through http://www.waltonfineart.com/

He has made a nice selection, and has considerable experience, and I am optomistic that he will be able to place the pictures with buyers. he contacted me after seeing my work in the Royal Academy Summer show.

For North African pictures you can contact Rose Issa Art Projects in London. And the Union Gallery in Edinburgh`s Broughton Street also holds a number of my paintings.

A Moroccan Adventure: Ouarzazate and around.

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People in the street, oil on card, 14 x 15 cm   SOLD

I spent a week in Ouarzazate, a serene place, with clear light, known for film studios, and as a gateway to the Atlas Mountains.

There seems to be no advertising at all, and few cars, which made me feel as if I were in an old Eastern European city in Communist times. The shops do not have elaborate signs or names either. This helps lend the place its peculiarly calm feeling. Here and there people sell things in the street: shoes, tools, magazines, but the streets are wide and clean, and calm. The buildings usually open flush onto to street, without gardens or porches, and are particularly boxy. Almost everything is peach coloured, including the pavements, some of which are painted thus.

Clouds, oil on card, 15 x 15.5 cm   SOLD

 Near the mosque, oil on card, 12.5 x 15.5 cm  SOLD

 A shop selling bric-a-brac, oil on card, 13.5 x 16.5  SOLD

A boy with a scooter, oil on card, 17 x 17.5 cm

This above, and the piece opening this posting were both painted from my hotel window and seem very de Chirico-an to me.

Mosque on a plain, oil on card, 13.4 x 16.4  SOLD

View of the mountains, oil on card, 12.5 x 15.5 cm   SOLD

I hired a little car (very cheap!) and drove into a mountain valley, entering through Ait Benhaddou and returning via Telhouet. This region is very dry, having suffered from droughts, and where vegetation appears it is almost surreally bright.

A distant ksar, valley near Ouarzazate, oil on card, 14 x 16 cm

Boys playing football, village near Ouarzazate, oil on card, 16.5 x 17.5 cm  SOLD

I can become sentimental at the sight of children playing football in empty patches of earth all over the world, from Brazil to North Africa: an international game, spontaneously and freely organised by children themselves, happily, without supervision, at minimal cost and one in which disputes  are usually amicably resolved. This can be taken as a rebuke against the regimented world of the British child.

A gorge, oil on card 16 x 16 cm            AVAILABLE

Valley, oil on card, 18 x 15 cm  - available

The mountains are big, the pictures are not, and I began to sense the limits of the small scale I use, which is better at intimacy than grandeur, better at the small and enclosed world of towns than vast spaces. On the other hand, this may be simply a question of personality: after All Turner succeeded with describing the epic in tiny watercolours, and it could be then that my nature is simply unsuited to grand themes.

A ksar, oil on card, 16 x 14 cm   unavailable

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These paintings are available through this art dealer, based in central London:

ROSE ISSA PROJECTS

82 Great Portland Street London W1W 7NW 

T 0207 602 7700. T 0207 323 1710

 E info@roseissa.com


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A Moroccan Adventure: Marrakesh

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Marrakesh is quite flat, dusty, peach coloured and dry. The buildings are low and the layout is incredibly confusing: there are few street signs; the souks are labyrinthine and there are no high buildings to use as visual references.

So getting lost is inevitable. But as the city is not enormous this is no great tragedy.

When I arrived in late February there were few tourists and it was most enjoyable, a month later it mas much too crowded and had a somewhat frenetic atmosphere. The city has few cars; and many artisan workshops and provides endless subject matter for painting.

I was hassled much less frequently, and less aggressively in Morocco than in my trips to Tunisia and Egypt where both trips were marred by people pestering me with offers of camel rides, hotels, taxis and items for sale.

I love painting from roofs, and from above, the falcon`s view:

 From the hotel roof, oil on card, 11.5 x 15 cm  NOT FOR SALE




This was taken by Gallery 5595 in lieu of commission for the Porty Art Walk exhibition with Jane Rutherford. Others went to  Rose Issa.

From the hotel roof  (with mosque), oil on card, 14 x 15.5 cm  available

The city is very coherent aesthetically, with very cubic, peach or ochre buildings, nearly all two or three stories at most, everything dusty or bruised:

Building with a phone box, oil on card, 17.5 x 15.2 cm   SOLD

A lane, oil on card, 16 x 15.5 cm   SOLD

This was sold as part of the Artists Support Pledge Scheme in June 2020

A yard, oil on card, 13.5 x 16.5 cm -  available

 A yard, above, makes me think of Guston, rather.

There was a successful run of paintings of Marrakesh`s huge market square:

 Cart and market, oil on card, 14.5 x 15.5 cm

This, above, is one of the best pictures I have ever done, I think.

Little mosque in the market square, oil on card, 14.5 x 15.5 cm   SOLD

 Marrakesh with the mountains beyond, oil on card, 15.5 x 13 cm  SOLD

Market, oil on card, 15.5 x 18 cm

Marrakesh is well served by parks and gardens:

Entrance to a park, oil on card, 14 x 17 cm - unavailable

There are endless shops and artisanal workshops, all wonderful for painting. Marrakesh is touristy, but much less mediated than places in Europe, and therefore considerably more alive.

Some shops, oil on card, 15.2 x 18 cm - available

A street near the hotel, oil on card, 13.5 x 18.5 cm - unavailable

Street selling cloth, oil on card, 15.5 x 12.5 cm  - available

A brickyard, oil on card, 14.5 x 15.5 cm   SOLD

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A trip to Egypt; thanks; thoughts; Morocco

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  A view of Richmond from Ham, oil on card, 13 x 9.5 cm   AVAILABLE

Rose Issa will be showing the Egyptian pochades at the Dubai Art Fair, others were taken by the Union Gallery, Edinburgh. 

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I regard the quality of work from this trip as markedly higher than from the Italian trip that preceded it in September 2012,  and on the same level as the week in Serrana, at the end of 2012.

Why so? In Italy I experimented with larger sizes of pochades- the result was often to disperse a certain concentration that a smaller picture can direct. There was an additional problem, which was that I was not visually surprised by Italy: a condition that nullifies creativity.

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I want to thank those who helped me on this trip: Rose Issa, Chris and Anci, Lise Colyer, my parents, the staff at the Victoria Hotel, Cairo and, the two nice German couples -one in Luxor the other in Aswan- who, perhaps unknown to them, cheered me up immensely  when I thought things were going pear shaped.

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The next trip will be to Uruguay, followed, most likely, by Morocco and the UK.

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Ham House in Winter, oil on card, 9.5 x 11.2 cm unavailable




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Tunisia: a selection of pochades

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Douz central market, oil on card, 9/ 13 cm SOLD

Oasis, Tozeur, oil on card, 9/ 11 cm    SOLD

Tunis, The French Quarter, oil on card, 14.5 / 12.5 cm - unavailable

The Mediteranean Sea, Sidi Bou Said, oil on card, 15 / 12 cm

Evening, El Jem, oil on card, 12 / 14 cm- unavailable

Carthage, Tunis, oil on card, 14 / 13 cm    AVAILABLE

A football pitch, Matmata, oil on card, 13 / 13 cm - unavailable

 Olive plantations, Sfax, oil on card, 10/ 12 cm   SOLD

Tozeur, a mosque, oil on card, 10 / 12.5 cm   SOLD

 Sfax, Docks, oil on card, 10/ 12 cm   SOLD

A side street, Tozeur, oil on card, 10/ 8.5 cm   SOLD

Here's a selection from Tunisia:. All the places I visited have features of obvious tourist appeal: Tunis  (Carthage/ Medina/ French  Quarter/ Sidi Bou Said), El Jem (the Roman Collosseum), Sfax (Medina), Tozeur (Medina, Oasis), Douz (central Market) and Matmata (Pit dwellings), in a journey that took me roughly south.

I went by train (very cheap and pleasant) bus and louage. It's not as orderly as Northern Europe, nor is it quite as messy as Brazil.

For me the pleasure of painting in Tunisia wass largely in depicting the white, very geometric buildings, which are set off by brilliantly coloured doors and windows, or the lands itself, which varied where I was from sandy and rocky to the sandy and green. The light is very bright in winter, coming in from the side lending wonderfully contrasts between darks and lights.

I also liked, in the smaller towns such as Tozeur, the little workshops where things are made or repaired, the tiny motorbikes, and seeing the markets though the traders often bored me with their sales pitches (Douz was considerably less annoying in this resepct and for some local cultural reasons that I can't fathom no-one hassled me at all there).

The contrasts between colonial districts -so very French with their crumbling Ecole de Beaux Arts stucco and patisseries- and the older Medinas are fascinating too, though as I have a strong aversion to tightly enclosed spaces and disorder,  I found spending a huge amount of time in these old, closed commercial areas intolerable. But they are certainly interesting, with wonderful doors and arches. There are stray cats everywhere.

But I was able to paint the Medina in Tozeur and Douz from above, thanks to the help of a shopkeeper and a hotel terrace respectively.

Perhaps it was the unusually cold weather, but the mood, especially of Tunis, was sullen, and while people were helpful enough, and occasionally kind, the country did not convey the sense of hopefulness that one imagines a new democratic settlement would bring.

I also felt that being North European was not seen positively, perhaps not surprisingly given the legacy of Western meddling and exploitation in North Africa. I told some people that I was Brazillian but they weren´t having it: too white they said. They´ve obviously never been to Santa Catarina.

Some of the paintings edge towards tourist painting- that is, tracing obvious set views. But, I think, most do not. And sometimes the set-piece tourist view is the set-piece because it is indeed striking, and to stating the obvious is not the same as being platitudinous.

Tozeur, view from a cafe, oil on card, 14 / 12 cm  AVAILABLE

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Six of these paintings from Tunisia were taken by Rose Issa Projects, a gallery in Kensington specialising in Middle-Eastern and Arabic art.