Spring Heat

This travel-inspired painting depicts the vast, surreal landscape of the Wadi Rum desert, paired with a Bedouin-inspired textile pattern painted in the sky. Nature and woven patterns are two of my biggest loves, and the idea to combine them came to me after a year of nomadic travels through 14 countries in Europe and the Middle East in my early 20s. Spending two weeks volunteering via workaway.info for a Bedouin tourist camp in beautiful Wadi Rum in 2014, I was thankful to experience a side of Jordan that fleeting tourists don’t have time to see or feel. Several months into a yearlong “nomadic journey”, I was immensely inspired by this centuries old, truly nomadic culture. Altho the culture has become modernized over the decades, it was nevertheless a window into an entirely different, more mobile, less material way of living. I relished in seeing the small details of how life was setup in my hosts parents tents. Spending time with my hosts sister and cousins, learning Arabic words like Shukran (thank you) Attending a wedding during the last days there and feasting on rice and goat off shared platters. Receiving Bedouin henna and trading nail polish with my hosts sister. Sipping delicious sage and cardamom spiced tea, and learning about Jordanian hospitality. Staying in a humble room in Wadi Rum village, initially completely empty aside from a car engine. Staying a night completely alone in the desert tourist camp, with little food or water, before walking thru the beautifully dramatic, mountain-lined desert a few hours back to the village. The sandstone mountains were so striking I keep wanting to paint them again and again, and each time I notice my style evolving. I look forward returning to beautiful Jordan someday to explore more of the stunning desert mountain valleys.