The French collection — 24x24 in — Oak Park studio

Montmartre, Colmar, Morocco. A glass borrowed from Matisse. No one has checked their passports.

A bottle and wine glass sit before a city assembled in ochre, blue, and pink. Montmartre’s streets meet images of Colmar; a Moroccan grille finds its place among French windows and arches. The familiar geography has become a little less obedient.

I reconstructed these encounters rather than keeping them in separate travel albums. The glass brings Matisse to the table, while the grille carries another journey into the room. What holds the painting together is not one location but the way looking works: places lodge in us, then turn up beside one another when we begin to make something.

About the artist
Satish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.

Dimensions: 24x24 in
Location: Oak Park studio

Related paintings
The French collection: another French journey reconstructed on canvas
Morocco 2: another rearrangement of places and painters

From the journal
Visit one of the places carried into this composition: 24 Hours in Unforgettable Colmar, France
On the papers and unexpected encounters I bring home from Paris