Deserts frozen in time

The vastness of deserts have always bewitched me. I’m not sure why, maybe it is because deserts are one of the few places on earth which appear to be frozen in time, with only the invisible wind to move the sand.

The colours, rock formations and patterns are always different whether you are in the Sahara, the Atacama or Namib desert, yet the emptiness and the eerie stillness stays the same.

The Colours of the desert

As an artist who uses bright colours I am always fascinated by the vibrant colour palette of the desert scenery. Blues, reds, oranges, greens, and everything in between. I am constantly dazzled by the way the rocks, the desert floor, and the sky shades change throughout a single day.  As Robert Edison Fulton Jr, an American inventor and adventurer, who travelled around the world on a motorcycle, said: “The desert tells a different story every time one ventures on it.”

Some of my artwork inspired by deserts

Five Desert Facts

1. 1. Deserts covers more than one fifth of the earth’s land
   2. Land is called ‘desert’ if it gets less than 250 millimetres of rain every year
   3. Deserts can be hot or cold
   4. According to scientists the most dangerous place in the world is located inside Africa’s Sahara Desert

   5. The original meaning of the word desert is ‘an abandoned place’  (Middle English: from Old French deserter from late Latin desertare meaning ‘left waste’).

The Sahara Desert

The Sahara is a desert on the African continent. With an area of 9,200,000 square kilometres, it is the largest hot desert in the world and the third largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Arctic.

A quirky souvenir from the Sahara Desert

The Atacama desert

The Atacama Desert is a desert plateau in South America covering a 1,600 kilometre strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes Mountains in Peru, Chile and Bolivia.  The Atacama Desert is known as the ‘driest place on Earth’.

Salar de Uyuni (Salt Desert)

Not strictly a desert but a salt desert. Once a pre-historic lake known as Lago Minchín, it covered southwest Bolivia, and when it dried up, it left behind the world’s largest salt flats, measuring 12,000 square kilometres.

THe Great Indian desert (Thar Desert)

The Great Indian Desert, also known as the Thar Desert, is a large, arid region in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent that covers an area of 200,000 squared kilometres straddling India and Pakistan. Every year thousands of camels converge on the tiny desert town of Pushkar, situated on the south eastern side of the Thar Desert, for the Pushkar Camel Fair.

Syrian and Jordanian Desert

The Syrian Desert is also known as the Syrian steppe, the Jordanian steppe, or the Badia. It is a region of desert, semi-desert and steppe covering 500,000 square kilometres of the Middle East, including parts of south-eastern Syria, northeastern Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia, and western Iraq. The ancient city of Palmyra, situated in an oasis in the Syrian desert, was once of the most important cultural centres of the ancient world.

My Bucket List Deserts

I hope in my lifetime I will get the opportunity to visit some other deserts… Here is my deser

• Namib deset – Namibia, Angola and South Africa
• Gobi Desert – China/Mongolia
• Antarctic Desert – Antarctica
• Taklamakan Desert – Central Asia