I met somebody in Morocco that I couldn’t stop thinking about.
It wasn’t romantic. I kept thinking about a woman I had seen sitting and selling tissues. I didn’t know her name, and we didn’t share a language. I can’t pretend I know her story. What stayed with me was something simpler and more difficult to explain: her presence.
What I actually saw
There was a calmness to her that held my attention. The environment around her had movement, noise, color, and ordinary objects, but she seemed composed inside of it. Her layered clothing carried strong color, and the contrast between those colors and the darker shapes around her stayed in my memory after I left.
I took a photograph, and that photograph became my reference. But I wasn’t interested in copying it as a document. I wanted to use it to paint what had remained with me.
The photograph is my reference. The memory is my guide.
When observation becomes interpretation
One of the most important forms in the painting came directly from the scene: a circular barrel or cylinder behind her. In the painting, that real object began to function almost like a halo. I didn’t need to invent a symbol and place it into the image. The symbol was already there in ordinary life; painting simply changed the way it could be read.
That became central to the piece. I wanted the woman to feel visually present without turning her into a story I had no right to invent. The painting could give weight to the encounter while still leaving her life unknown.
Painting the memory instead of the photograph
Found in the Medina began as my first attempt at working alla prima, but it didn’t stay a one-session painting. I kept returning to it, revising passages and later using selective glazing to deepen the oranges, blues, violets, and blacks.
The process taught me something I keep returning to in my work: accuracy and truth are not always the same thing. A painting can be faithful to an encounter without reproducing every visual fact exactly. Sometimes the color needs to deepen. Sometimes an edge needs to disappear. Sometimes an ordinary circle behind a figure becomes the structure that holds the entire image together.
What stayed with me
I wasn’t drawn to her circumstances. I was drawn to her presence.
That distinction matters to me. I don’t know what her day was like before I saw her or what happened after I left. I only know what I witnessed: a brief encounter, a photograph, and a feeling that stayed strong enough that I needed to paint it.
Found in the Medina is my attempt to hold onto that feeling without pretending to know more than I do.
You can view the one-of-one original painting or explore the fine art print.