For the 2000-2001 academic year I professed sociology at a new university for women in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The University provided me with a seventh floor apartment that had a spectacular view of three mosques, the busy large city fish market, the icon building
for Abu Dhabi, many large pastel apartment buildings, parks, shops, restaurants, the ocean, boats, islands, aircraft, the sky and a 24 hour parade of people and vehicles.
The view was ever-changing and so interesting at all hours that
I never wanted a TV set or felt a need for curtains.

Inspired by the artists of the Auburn UU Fellowship whose work I had long admired, I brought some art supplies with me in case there might be time for a long deferred new hobby. If not now, when? My first works were done on the cardboard that had packaged my Ikea furniture. The sight of a nice bare piece of cardboard still remains tempting. I had fun and the time went by fast. When I wanted to use another surface I found that canvas was very pricey and intimidating so I started using plywood. I painted views from my windows and of interiors
and people.

After some great days in Sardinia, Germany and Sweden on the trip back home I started painting again. Most paintings were of familiar places and people with a few diversions to try new materials and subjects. I was compulsive and impatient and did
as many as five paintings a week.

In August 2003, I stopped painting and have done nothing since.
Maybe the constellation has shifted. So it goes.

Influences? A junior year in the South of France and some painting with a Cézanne protégé. Many pleasurable hours in great museums. The fields, levees, sun and sky of the San Joaquin Delta of California, my home area. The sun of Egypt. And Asia. Great travels.
Three years in Haiti stealing colors and ideas. And some windows, beaches,
cats and fun from Matisse.

In mid-October our 19 year old cat, Chessie, died. I now know that there is no bad picture of a beloved companion.

Paul Starr
November 2003