I hope I can explain how this painting, (done is soft pastels) came about. One day in 1989 I arrived at the Kneeland Gallery in Ketchum, Idaho to check on my paintings they had, but unexpectedly chose to enter in the back door. Standing there in the back room was the gallery director talking to a man who said they were just discussing me for the potential to do a commissioned work he wanted. 

Now here’s the ??? part. Before he described what the painting was that he wanted - I literally saw the image of a building in my mind; the same building now shown in the painting.

That place was the home of a Day Center that he and his wife provided for the 'street boys' of Khartoum, in Sudan, Africa. Mark and Margaret Stewart created a Day Center for homeless street boys under the age of 18. (Girls were cared for at home). They fed them and offered job skills training, but the space was not large enough to house them at night. The Center was named ‘SABAH’, which is Arabic for ‘New Beginning’.

The scene shows many of the boys that they photographed, together with the local director, and Mark and Margaret standing in the doorway. All in all I used about 100 photographs to create the whole painting.

Even more interesting is the fact that there was no photograph that had the whole building in one view because it was tightly set within a wall, not shown here. However, there was one photo taken from a roof across the street from high above. This showed me the plan layout, which I pieced together with all the partial views of the facade in the Stewart's photo album. My architectural and engineering drafting degree came in handy for this task! 

Now remember I said I saw the image of the whole building before Mark started to talk? I can’t explain it. These are just the facts of what happened.

Below is one more intriguing painting of the Stewarts that they commissioned me to do, and please see the interesting story behind it that follows the photo of it.

Mark and Margaret (Macdonald) Stewart are two of the most amazing people anywhere. They continue to do incredibly helpful things all in this world for people and the environment.

On one of their trips traveling from the U.S. to Khartoum, Sudan to get to the ‘homeless street kids center’ they started, they elected to skip the crowded smelly train and instead hitch-hiked a ride in the back of a supply delivery truck through the night, across the desert as the crow flies, into the next day.

Nights were chilly so they picked up yards of fabric at the market bazaar to wrap around them, hence the turbine and scarf. As it happened, they were riding atop the truck with a friend who snapped their photo  - with the sunrise gleaming in Mark’s sunglasses.

They asked me to render the scene from that photo in soft pastels. - G.P.L.