From long-ago lockdown time
Had Draa is a village about 25 km from Essaouira. It’s pretty quiet, except for Sundays, when a large expanse of ground becomes a huge market.
Who does not love a donkey? I love both the timeless quality of a man in a djellaba and a donkey, but also the modern day appearance of plastic in the tarpaulin and the donkey’s load.
I actually put quite a bit of preparation into this painting. The source image was, of course, a photo taken by a friend (Regragui Aitbella). You can see from the man’s mask that this was during the Pandemic, so I could not have got back to Morocco, no matter what.
"I love the juxtaposition of very old methods of selling between country people, and their garments, with clearly modern incurstions, such as plastic, which appears where it is considered useful."
I dashed off a quick watercolour study of the old man and his donkey, to see how it would work. I can see even from this study that I wanted to avoid the huge piece of plastic sheeting hanging in an odd way over the donkey’s back and obscuring her belly. But I was keen on the bright green hose and the red plastic lid of the container she carries.
Yes, I traced the photo. I am not sure I can even apologise for this practice. I like a fairly complex scene at times. Carbon paper and printouts are very useful tools, if you can avoid being too slavish a copyist.
I decided to use mostly earth colours for this painting. This means it ended up looking related to previous paintings (such as a group of goats, or a calf at Had Draa). But this is a different exercise, as those used the Zorn palette of black, red, yellow and white.
If I took the time, I expect I could create some pretty decent paints out of the natural pigments in Morocco’s rocks and soil. There is plenty of red, for example.