WADI IN SAKHIR 1995

Editor: Here we have Rashid Al Khalifa's "WADI IN SAKHIR" painted in 1995. It's a watercolor painting, and it gives me such a strong feeling of serenity, that everything is in its rightful place... How would you interpret this work? Curator: What a delicious question! The colours! So much nuance within the browns and creams, like whispers of ochre and lilac. And notice that touch of the orientalist’s gaze, almost yearning for this tranquil scene of the natural environment; do you see it, too? I wonder if Khalifa was trying to capture the very spirit of Bahrain in watercolor form, this intersection of land and a seemingly boundless sky. What details really sing to you, what part of the song grabs your attention? Editor: It’s definitely the way the light reflects in the water; how fluid yet solid it appears and it almost looks as if it is calling to me! And I can almost smell the air depicted here! What does this say about Al Khalifa’s technique? Curator: The transparency he achieves, it’s sublime! Almost otherworldly and yet grounded, literally, to the landscape, do you find yourself longing for that particular place in that particular moment? And do you see in that luminosity how he transcends the expected… almost floating between realism and something much more evocative? Editor: Definitely! It’s that transcendent quality that made me pause. It makes the wadi feel both familiar and completely unknown at the same time! I now see so many other layers; this wasn't a simple landscape at all! Curator: Precisely! A window into the artist’s soul.