Painting the Middle East

"We each paint our lives and frame our experiences of the world in a distinctive way for reasons that we cannot always understand," writes Ann Kerr in this book. The watercolors that fill its pages are an expression of the author's affection for and fascination with the Middle East, painted during her many sojourns there starting in the mid-fifties and continuing to the present time.
The paintings are unashamedly romantic, revealing nothing of the turmoil that has disrupted the region during the last half-century and brought personal tragedy to so many, including the author and her family; they are almost the antithesis of such events. The paintings "represent hours snatched away from the business of everyday life - periods of time spent in nature amidst the sun-washed relics of the past where evidence of old cruelties and folly has faded away or been covered with sand and weeds."
These watercolors and photographs are woven together with a brief narrative that brings to the reader the context in which they were painted or photographed. The book is divided into the four areas where the author painted: Lebanon, North Africa, Egypt, and the Holy Land.

Ann Zwicker Kerr is the coordinator of the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Enrichment Program at the University of California in Los Angeles and a frequent speaker on the Middle East