Sands I

My art teacher asked me to paint a landscape. “Landscape” was a word I associated with Constable and Turner. I lived in a desert city, surrounded by ugly concrete buildings. Where was I to find a landscape?

I decided to do what young women were not supposed to do in those days; I ventured out of the city and into the desert (chaperoned, of course) with my oil pastels and my foldable stool. I chose a secluded spot far from the main road and got to work. I desperately needed to get the piece done before my pastels and I got buried in sand—or before a Saudi man drove by and asked me what I was doing—or something worse.