Valparaiso - in the centre

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 Building in the centre, oil on card, 14.5 x 11 cm -  -unavailable

Valparaiso, shop in the centre, 14.5 x 13.5 cm, oil on card   - unavailable

Valparaiso

There are fine trolleybuses painted green and ivory. There is graffiti or, as some idiots call it, street art, and it`s nasty and disfiguring. There are schoolgirls in hideous grey uniforms which include monstrously thick grey socks. Why humiliate your children? A legacy of British influence, I fear.

There are innumerable solid little shops and to get anything you go and ask and an endlessly patient soul gets the stuff from the shelf then puts it in a bag. There is very little to choose from, making selection easy and making one feel grateful when you find roughly what you`re looking for, Then he writes the cost on a chit which you take to a minuscule kiosk about a metre away. Then you pay (sometimes its the same person that put the stuff in the bag, they`ve just walked along behind the counter metre or so). Then your chit is stamped or initialed and you return to the other counter to pick up your stuff. Obviously, this Soviet style system is extremely slow, but I suppose it makes theft next to impossible.

Neruda's house is not especially interesting, though the steep walk there is. The Fine Art Museum isn't that interesting either but does tell you something about late nineteenth century tastes and their insistence on imposing a certain cloying sentiment over everything, so that the depictions of nature are most unnatural and forced. Thus, the few impressionist pictures there come as a tremendous relief.

There are stray dogs all over the place and consequently dogshit everywhere.  The town is disintegrating- there are bits and pieces falling off buildings and everything seems to require renovation. Some of the funicular railways work and they are marvelous contraptions. People sell a bizarre array of used goods over near the bus station, laying out car parts, children`s clothes sweets or whatever you might imagine on the ground. That reminds me of Ukraine just after Communism, though the sellers faces are considerably more cheerful in Valparaiso.

The city is falling apart, for sure, but it is doing so with a certain geniality and a  Tom Waitsian style that is utterly  beguiling.

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A Moroccan Adventure: Taroudant

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Gates, oil on card, 12.5 x 12.5   available

Taroudant is a nice old town with a leafy central square, in which snake charmers and story tellers appear at night. It`s well preserved with gates and walls almost intact, and a fine old ksar. As with the other places I saw in Morocco the mosques did not really stand out. There appears to be a standard form, with a square tower and a cupula, and this was repeated wherever I went.

 A lane, oil on card, oil on card, 12.5 x 15.5 cm  SOLD

               

One could pass a lifetime happily painting just shops in Morocco.

 Toilet attendant, oil on card, 12 x 14 cm  SOLD

This picture, above, is quite in the vein of Ardizzone, the British illustrator, whose sketchbooks are so lively.

A street along the walls, oil on card, 14 x 15 cm  SOLD

 A quiet street, oil on card, 15.5 x 13.5 cm

Wasteland, housing, oil on card, 12.5 x 15.5 cm

The city is expanding with building work here and there both inside and on the outskirts.

 Argan tree, oil on card, 12 x 15 cm  SOLD

The locals use bicycles a lot, whizzing past quite fearsomely in the narrow streets. I hired an old roadster and went on a little wander out of town. The landscape undulates nicely with olive groves.

A view of some tree, oil on card, 12.5 x 13 cm - unavailable

 An avenue, oil on card, 12.5 x 15 cm

 A view from the walls, oil on card, 15 x 13.5 cm  unavailable

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 Thanks

I must thank the kind Moroccan gentleman, whose name I shamefully forget, who bought me dinner and breakfast when he saw that my bank card was consumed by a cash machine and I thought the world was about to end. And I must also thank  Martin and Rea from Germany, who gave me cash to get me through the weekend, and took me for dinner too, and were delightful company besides. And thanks, of course, to my parents for wiring me some money and thus saving my skin.

Moral: have kind parents, or, when traveling, carry some cash, and never depend entirely on plastic.

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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

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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Remnants

The rate of demolition in this area of Florianopolis is so rapid that soon all the original buildings will have gone and there will only be the sort of faceless condominiums you can see being constructed in the distance in both these images.

I ought, then, to hurry and record more of these old houses. They aren't of first grade architectural quality, but they do have personality.

Being a foreigner here makes me feel impotant to do anything to stop this process of destruction.