All the Sweet Perfumes of Arabia

I enjoy writing but it is with textiles that I can create my innermost responses to experiences. This piece was created in response to a visit to Syria and in particular Damascus. Visiting Damascus  was  a little like a dream come true- it both was and wasn’t what I had dreamt, the reality as it grew on me, as I traversed ancient streets, touched broken  Roman pillars, and touched antique turkoman textiles, was much richer and denser than I had dreamt. I wanted to represent this richness in textile  and somehow the experience was infused with the smell of perfumes- of essential oils and aromas meant to ignite desire and love, the words of Kahlil Gibran ,wordsmith of my adolescence floated to the surface.

To visit a place that has been dreamt of is often nothing like the dream- the first instant is almost a shock and then you need to rekindle the romance and the dream with new found treasures not dreamt of, of discoveries that set alight the imagination, of mint tea sipped in shops in the souq draped in antique textiles…ahhh I can feel it now drifting to invade reality and set my imagination free……..

Are there places you dream about?