On New Year's Eve 2025, I boarded a ferry in Sète, southern France, with my thirty-year-old camper, bound for Nador on Morocco's northeast coast. From there, I drove down the eastern side of the Atlas Mountains to Tissardmine in the Sahara, where I spent three wonderful weeks painting.
Windy Desert, the largest drawing I made there, was created using charcoal, desert earth and pigments from the souks. It travelled beneath the camper bed for the rest of the journey and bears a few scars!
After a month in the desert, I continued through southern Morocco, staying at the remarkable 500-year-old Kasbah des Caïds in Tamnougalt, before reaching the Atlantic coast at Sidi Ifni and travelling north to Essaouira.
Much of the journey took me along rough roads through vast, desolate, rock-strewn landscapes, sometimes driving for hours without seeing another vehicle. Travelling alone in a thirty-year-old camper added a certain element of suspense. I became extraordinarily alert to potholes and tried not to think too much about breaking down miles from anywhere!
Ten rather luxurious days at Kasbah Bab Ourika in the Atlas Mountains provided a welcome change from campervan life. Driving through Marrakech's new city, however, was terrifying for quite different reasons, with cars and mopeds coming at me from every direction!
From Marrakech, I headed north through wildflower-filled fields and the Middle Atlas, eventually making my way to Tangier and the ferry to Spain, arriving home in time for Easter.
Ordinarily, these studies made on location would become the starting point for larger paintings in the studio, where the experience is filtered through memory and gradually distilled. So far, however, the Moroccan work remains as it was made, a collection of immediate responses to the extraordinary landscapes I encountered.
Nearly forty years after my first journey to India, the pleasure of travelling with a sketchbook and discovering the world through drawing and painting remains much the same.
