ARABIAN NIGHTS

This painting was born out of longing. After leaving the desert, I carried with me its silence, its heat, and the way it stripped me down to something timeless. But as the days passed, I realized I also carried a deep ache - a pull to return, to be surrounded again by that ancient stillness and the quiet wisdom hidden in the sand.

“Arabian Nights” came alive from that feeling of missing the desert. I wasn’t just missing a place; I was missing the way it made me feel - small, humbled, yet connected to something greater than myself. In its vastness, I felt as if I was walking among echoes of another time, as if the desert held knowledge older than words, older than memory itself.

The 24K gold in this piece is my attempt to capture that sense of sacredness - the way the desert glowed at night under the moon, both harsh and tender, infinite yet intimate. Every texture, every layer, carries with it my desire to go back, not only to the physical desert but to the version of myself I discovered there.

For me, “Arabian Nights” is not just a painting. It is a doorway - a reminder that even when I am far away, I can close my eyes and return to that ancient landscape, to the stories the desert whispered to me, to the stillness that reshaped me, and to the promise that its knowledge never truly leaves.

MEDIUM: 24K Gold and acrylic on plywood

SIZE: 143 x 99 cm

YEAR: 2023