Background ......Auckland artist Wendy Leach was amazed when she received a phone call from a gallery in Queenstown to say that a new client had walked in that afternoon and liked her paintings so much that he had purchased five of them.
That was in January 2001. The man turned out to be Muwaffaq Salti, an oil trader of Arab / British parentage, living in Singapore.

He was so enthusiastic about Wendy's work that he offered to sponsor her on a painting trip to the desert kingdom of Jordan. Wendy accepted the invitation with great enthusiasm and will be travelling to Jordan in March.

During her visit, and hosted by Muwaffaq's mother, Patricia Salti, Wendy will be exploring the Jordanian countryside with its spring wildflowers, olive groves, orchards and desert. She will visit many historical and biblical sites, including the ancient rose red city of Petra (below), the desert castles, Wadi Rum (Lawrence of Arabia country), Greco Roman antiquities, the River Jordan and Mount Nebo. Wendy will translate scenes, landscapes, and sites visited into a series of unique paintings.

The experience will be an adventure into unknown territory, and a chance to travel and explore a totally new landscape, which is the sort of challenge Wendy enjoys.

Wendy departs for Jordan on March 24 and will update this page with news and photographs on her return home in mid-April.

UP-DATE..... E-mail from Jordan, April 6

Hi from Amman, since I have been here, my days have been spent seeing Jordan's main sights and the evenings have been an amazing array of invitations out to dinner. The city of Amman,( pop about 1.5 million) is like a great carpet of cream-coloured houses sprawling over seven hills and expanding rapidly on all sides. All the buildings are limestone. Outside of Amman I have been seeing some amazing historical sites, including castles and ancient Roman sites, and some truly amazing landscape. It is spring here, so for this month at least, parts of the countryside are green and there are wildflowers. There are spectacular desert regions. I went for a four wheel drive excursion in Wadi Rum which has got to be one of the highlights. The absolute highlight however, was the ancient Nabatean city of Petra. Carved out of colourful rock, the scale and grandeur of Petra is difficult to describe. The sense of history and human achievement was awesome, and truly inspiring to me as an artist. It is also a lively place with colourful Bedouin, camels and donkeys everywhere. I rode a camel through Petra, which along with smoking a 'hookah' and floating in the Dead Sea, was an experience of Jordan which was on my 'must do' list.
For those of you at home who were a bit concerned about how safe I might (not) be, there is no sense of danger here at all. All the 'non-Arab' people I have met who live here, say that they wouldn't choose to live anywhere else. Life goes on here with everyone fully understanding but accepting that, with Israel to the West and Iraq to the East, some of the surrounding countries have really serious strife going on. The population here is 92 percent Sunni Muslim, and the people are warm and friendly. (If you are not a muslim, over here you are called a 'christian' which I find a bit odd. There doesn't seem to be any concept that there may be other options.) The royal family is extremely important to all Jordanians, who hang photographs of the king everywhere you look. They welcome foreigners and they want tourists to come for the good of their economy. Jordan is a poor country that has no oil and relies on aid from other countries. There are eighteen universities in Jordan and the population is very well educated. As many Jordanians have studied in England and America, they feel strong ties to both countries. There are several Palestinian refugee camps around Amman that have evolved into large towns over the past decades as the Palestinian occupants decline Jordan's offer of full citizenship, preferring to hold out in the camps in the hope that they will get to return home one day. All Jordanians and foreigners living here are much more politically aware than the average New Zealander, and politics, both local and international, is a very common subject in conversations.

Wendy having coffee with HRH Prince Raad and Princess Majda

Update 20 April 2004.

I arrived home from Jordan on 12 April. Although my reason for travelling there was to produce a series of paintings, the limited time (17 days) did not allow me to work on any paintings while I was there. However, armed with my journal and my camera, I travelled all over Jordan and visited many beautiful places, recording my impressions. My experience in Jordan was extremely enjoyable, stimulating and productive. I am bursting with ideas and inspiration for my paintings. Now I am home, my work starts. I will post some of my new paintings on this website. Till then, here are some of my photographs from the trip.

To see my paintings as I complete them, click here.

Art Classes
with Wendy Leach