Prior to, during and after the barbaric July War of 2006, and up to my Desert Experience, I undertook several experiments in my painting. Some were a scream against the savage Israeli bombardment. These would be followed by another series of ‘Nature Revisited‘ a new experiment with lakes of the Harriman park of upstate New York, and a series of culturally inspired abstract works.

Meanwhile, the desert and its culture, past and present, strongly influenced my eye and my mind. I felt a strong energy empowering me, bringing new images of unprecedented artistic writing to my painting. The desert stole me away from my previous aesthetic worries; my attempts to try to refine or redefine my aesthetic values and goals. It offered me an extended stay in a world of unmatched purity in its simplest and most refined revelations equal only to the land of the Cedars, to Sannine and to the Bekaa valley, the playground of my childhood, particularly when covered with snow; the white of the skies. Painting had felt, again and likewise, so pleasurable, satisfying and thirst quenching. I felt an urgent creative need to paint day and night in full harmony with my environment, my past, my present, my future, and myself.

2007-2009 and beyond were to a certain extent the years of the desert par excellence. The wholeness of the experience matters most to me. The desert was not only the sand I carried back with me to spray on my wet canvas, or mix with my colours for texture or for the semblance of reality. The desert is the story of its men, past, present, and future. The desert is the tent, and the desert is a dream; a futuristic civilisation in the process of becoming. My painting is about capturing the essence of the wholeness of the desert’s cultural components and their influences on my eye, mind and feelings.