Cairene Impressions

I have never wanted to be a better painter of urban scenes so much as when making my regular visits back to Cairo. The city I grew up in is sprawling, chaotic, vast, and simply vibrates with life.

The largest city in Africa and the Middle East, parts of what is now Cairo were already inhabited 6000 years ago. It is layered with human history, and today presents a patchwork of very different Cairos.

New visitors tend to either immediately take to it or be overwhelmed. I love it. And for a painter, there are endless possibilities.

Old Cairo, Masr El Qadima, the main Souq, Khan El Khalili, the outdoor cafes, the hustle and bustle that define and challenge it. It is a city of contradictions, and you could try and capture that too, in a painting.

For my first postings, I am borrowing some of my cousin Ahmed Sadek’s beautiful photographs to set the scene for this, hopefully regular, blog section.

This small selection is a vignette of faces from Egypt, smiles from Egypt. And then, because old copper bits and bobs are so important, some of those too.

Here is a map showing the locations within Cairo.