Tunis- the French Quarter

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Tunis, French quarter, oil on card c. 12 c 14 cm, 2012

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Five previously unpublished pochades from Tunisia

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El Jem, oil on card, 2012, 13 x 13 cm - available

El Jem, mosque, oil on card, 14 x 12 cm - available

Douz,from the hotel roof, 2012, oil on card, 13 x 10 cm - available

Douz, from 23 Mars Hotel, 2012, oil on card, 11.3 x 10 cm - available from No31 Gallery

Douz Cemetery, oil on card, 1.5 x 7.6 cm - available 

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Tozeur, desert station, 2012

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Tozeur, desert station, 2012- oil on card, 12 x 13.5 cm

 

 

This was from the Tunisian trip ten years ago, and for some reason wasn't catalogued at the time. 

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A Moroccan Adventure: Sidi Ifni; conclusions

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Sidi Ifni is an old Spanish town, notable for its collection of white and blue Art deco(-ish) buildings, and good state of preservation, and its fine location on a ridge overlooking the sea.

I did a good deal of my work there from the hotel, which had excellent views across the town and beyond.

Headland, oil on card, 14 x 16 cm - unavailable

Fort, oil on card, 12 x 15 cm - damaged, unavailable

A view from the hotel roof, oil on card, 12.5 x 14.5 cm  - available

This, above, has some affinities with C. R. Mackintosh's French watercolours.

Roofs, oil on card, 12.2 x 15.5 cm  SOLD

People in the street, oil on card, 12.5 x 12.5 cm

And this, above, is quite related to the Ourzazate street pictures. I am attempting a more fluent, almost cartoonish, method of brush handling, which I have been attempting to import from Chinese painting.

 A caravan park, oil on card, 17.5 x 17 cm

 There are a couple from my wanderings around the town too:

A man working in a smallholding, oil on card, 13.5 x 15 cm  SOLD

A terrace, oil on card, 12.3 x 15 cm  SOLD

Sidi Ifni, oil on card, 12.5 x 15 cm  SOLD

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That brings to a close my offerings from Morocco.

There are a few weaker pieces, but that is always to be expected given my methods: I work plein air, and  do not make sketches beforehand. I am not a studio painter: I enjoy the element of risk that comes from working directly from motifs outside, and I enjoy being directly exposed to places.  And I tend to philosophise that without failures there would be no triumphs anyway.

It is always hard to make a fair assessment of ones own work, especially when little time has passed since their execution, but I feel the percentage of duds is low, and of good ones high, and that compared to previous North African trips to Tunisia and Egypt, this set is larger and more assured. The colours are more confidently handled and the pictures are bigger.

Partly this success is simply due to knowing which subjects to avoid- those which don`t suit the format, or motifs which, for whatever subjective reasons, don`t quite suit me. In addition, Morocco is a relatively easy place to visit and work in: more relaxed and, I sensed, more at ease with itself and with Europeans than either Egypt or Tunisia.

With such reflections I am considering a second Moroccan Adventure next year, but this time going to Fez, Tangier, Meknes and the cypress forests just south of there.

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To see or buy paintings please visit this gallery:

 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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 Thanks

I must thank: parents, kind strangers, the amusing Dutch, German and British tourists who kept me company in various hotels, and of course Rose Issa for her encouragement.

Egypt, London, Scotland 2013

Egypt: it makes sense to go in late January, so, I'll try to sort that out- It'll be much like the Tunisian trip, a maximum of 4 locations, quite concentrated, twenty days. I can visit London and Scotland too.

I have some reservations about street hassle and general nuisance. In Tunisia it was tolerable- unpleasant but tolerable.

Douz market

Douz market (arches), oil on card, 11/ 9.5 cm  SOLD

This painting from Tunisia was sold today in Edinburgh via the Union Gallery, who hold about 30 paintings.

If you go there, ask to see the pictures as they are not always, or all, on display. It's near the top of Broughton Street.

Edinburgh: pochades; some conclusions; travel; thanks

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Edinburgh winter (Smith´s Place), oil on card, 11 / 13 cm  - available

Warehouses on Jane Street, Leith, oil on card, 9/ 12.5 cm  SOLD

Winter, Edinburgh  (Smith´s Place), oil on card, 11 / 13 cm  AVAILABLE

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I went up to Edinburgh and delivered paintings to the Union Gallery: they have a fair selection now from Brazil, Tunisia and the UK.

I stayed down in Leith- thanks to Anna and Kenneth for putting me up.

Very cold, of course, but splendid and Edinburgh is splendidly schizophrenic too: that mixture of elevated architecture and ground level squalor that characterises Georgian British cities. In Leith on the ground: endless pubs, cut-price barbers shops, Polish delicatessents, advice centres and pound stores:  magnificent, sometimes battered, soiled sandstone neo-classical  above.

While I was in Scotland, a painting sold at the Royal Scottish Academy :

Small Pines, oil on card, 10 / 12 cm   SOLD

Conclusions

The best paintings of the trip are those which refect some subjective intimacy with the place: ergo those from the UK are, I feel, in some way richer. The Tunisian ones tend, at their most slight, towards a sort of orientalist tourist painting,. This is because I felt some obligation to paint the things that most obviously define somewhere,  not unforgivably as those are the reasons for visiting in the first place. But all places have a skin and the skin is not necessarily as interesting as the other organs within.

But, of course, one develops subjective relations with a place over time, and as I plan more visits to the Islamic world  this will surely develop.

The better pictures were mostly not the larger size (5/ 13 cm or so) but smaller say (10/ 11 cm). This has something to do with concentration, and to do with the changes in light (this is much less of an issue in Brasil where the sun rises and sets rapidly and more or less stays put in between).

The boxes I  use to transport pictures are popular and I have to develop these: not necessarily to make them fancier, but perhaps to make more consistent in terms of quality. The buyers do not like polystyrene: a pity as it is very easy to use to for packing: they prefer cardboard which has more charm. Also, the boxes need better labelling. I need to make a simple label I can write on and sign to identify the pictures after painting.

I am annoyed with the photos I took of some of the pictures, which is not the fault of the camera but my own carelessness. So I must endeavor to improve that.

Travel

Travel is often detestable. Of course seeing new places new places and trying new food and so on is wonderful. I mean lugging things about, waiting in check-in queues, feeling very tired, being ripped off and worriying about something or other; misunderstanding something pitifully simple because your school French is rusty. Unpacking is a bore too, as is packing and wearing grubby clothes. If I were wealthy these travails would lessen considerably: sadly the likelihood of that in the near future is not high. The poorer traveller must rely on wit, good planning, stamina and  the friendship of strangers.

The Tunisia trip was reasonably good in this respect: I had the sensible notion that staying anywhere for less than two nights would mean all the above challenges would be increased. And the Rough Guide is really very good (though I arrived in El Jem to find that the only hotel had been demolished).

If one is visiting a new country there is the tendency to want to see everything. But really good painting, is not a product so much of the subject as the mindset of the maker. Good pictures are constructed on a balance of knowledge and its opposite: ignorance and surprise. So a short-ish  trip allows both, and fleeting fleeting visits are usually hopeless (digital photography, which has become almost cost free, is aften a false friend to the traveller as it encourages an erroneous notion that experience can effortlessly be "captured").

Thanks

Many thanks to those who helped me over this trip : Lise, Chris, my parents, Anna and Kenneth, Matthew Cushen, Chris Anderson, Bilel,  and Chokri.

And thanks to the many anonymous souls who helped out in the innumerable small ways that make life more than tolerable.

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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.

Tunisia, London, Edinburgh

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Well, the bags are packed and I'm off painting for a month. Maybe there will be a little show in London.

I'm glad to get away from internet-land with its strange fictions for a while, so I'll probably just check my emails occasionally.

In March, assuming the trip is successful, I'll post the paintings I've done: which is likely to be an odd and contrasting crop. I felt that the work from the recent Santa Catarina journey suffered from "sameyness"- the natural landscapes too alike to provide a varied crop- or my eye and skills too slight to emphasise sufficiently the differences between scenes.

Pochade carriers; São Paulo; February 2012: Tunisia, London and Scotland: places to paint

Pochade carriers: there are forty odd. I'm going to São Paolo this week to see if I can find a gallery to represent me. I need to make a few more of these carriers for the coming trips. People seem to find the carriers quite charming.

Tunisia

I shall be there for fourteen days. Following from my experience of previous trips, for painting it is better to stay in than stay somewhere for three or four days than to travel around a lot, because then you can then take your time more to see what is really worth painting. Also you lose less time with changing hotels and so forth. I think therefore to stay in Tunis and in Sousse perhaps with a trip down to the south somewhere such as Matmata.

Tunisia is not huge, so crossing it from north to south can, I guess, be done in a day.

Perhaps (not in order):

1. Carthage
2. Grande mosque
3. Dougga 
4. Sidi Bou Said 
5. Holy city of Kairouan
6. Matmata- wonderful buildings
7. El Djem amphitheatre
8. Sousse- the Medina

 Scotland

It is sure to be utterly freesing. The cold, however isn't what makes painting in Britain difficult, it's the fact that the weather changes rapidly, so no sooner have you started a picture than you have to restart it!

I'll go to Rosslyn Chapel, and if I can, from Edinburgh, some scenes from Carlton Hill. Also the spectacular Dean Bridge.

London

I'll continue to explore along the river. The reason for this is that its relatively easy to work there, there are fine views and the light is good. there aren't cars blocking the way either.

I'll also try to do something from the north of side of Notting Hill. I love the big stucco buildings. I love the rise of Ladbroke Grove, it's elegant Victorian planning and garden squares.

The difficulty is finding a good place to view it: an apartment with a good view, perhaps: can any readers help?

Praia Mole- a bright day; London, Tunisia and Scotland

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Praia Mole- a bright day, oil on card, 11 x 13cm   NOT FOR SALE

I have bought my tickets for the UK and Tunisia in February. 

The weather is likely to be cold in the UK: if it snows I shall be happy as painting things in the whiteness is so delightful. I shall be in Scotland and in London.

If you are there and wish to meet, drop me a line.

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