Rayann Abbott

Studio Exhibition Seminar

“We want happy paintings. Happy paintings. If you want sad things, watch the news.”

-Bob Ross

 Life in Morocco in the streets of Tangier flows with people; you can’t go anywhere in the crowded streets without bumping into someone. I lived in Tangier, Morocco in 2019 for a semester, taking photos of almost anything I could and looking more like a tourist than I wanted to. I thankfully have something to look back on so I can discover what I may have missed while living there. In my art, the beauty of Morocco is put onto canvas to show what could easily be missed.

The things that I wanted to focus on with my paintings were the color blue and the idea of silhouettes with the use of black paint–which I almost never use, so it was a new experience for me. Blue has a lot of meaning to the people of Morocco; there is even a whole town, Chefchaouen, painted completely blue. It is a cold color that compliments the hot weather of Morocco, as well as complimenting the dark black of a silhouette. The silhouette is about the mystery of the page, not knowing the story behind the person or object that is darkened in the photo. There is a sense of actually being there, like passing someone on the street, not remembering what they looked like, but knowing they were there.

Morocco wasn’t for me because of my anxiety. I didn’t like the crowded, unclean streets, just like how I wouldn’t want to live in a place like New York City. However, once you stop and take a second to take it all in and notice the smaller things such as the architecture or the landscapes, you can find that there is more than just marketplaces and crowded streets.