Diabat is a small village on the southern edge of Essaouira, about a five-minute drive from the city center. I set up my studio here a few years ago, drawn in by its raw, traditional character and the chance to create and live authentically alongside the people who call it home.
I began simply, getting to know my neighbors, who welcomed me with real warmth. Once people learned I was a painter, a few started asking me for small commissions for their shops and businesses. Slowly, I became part of the fabric of the neighborhood, not just an artist passing through it.
At some point, an idea took shape: what if I painted murals on people's walls, together with the neighborhood's kids? I asked a few families directly, and to my surprise, they agreed without hesitation. I then went to the local authorities for permission, and they agreed as well.
So I organized my first mural session, gathering kids from the neighborhood after school. What happened next surprised me even more: over thirty children showed up that first afternoon, splashing color, running around with brushes, and covering the entire wall faster than I could have imagined.
The result was something I hadn't expected either, not just the mural itself, but how open and eager the kids were to keep going. They asked if we could do it again, and we have, again and again, ever since, whenever I have free time and a wall becomes available.
Community Mural Workshops — Diabat
Collective Beach Canvas
In 2023, I set up a different kind of collective piece, this time on the beach beneath Essaouira's old fortress walls, at sunset, with a very different crowd than the kids of Diabat.
I built a couple of large wooden panels and carried them down to the sand myself, and before that, I simply spread the word to my circle of friends: painters, musicians, filmmakers, people who move in the same creative orbit as me but rarely end up making something together in the same place.
As the sun dropped behind the ramparts, people began arriving one by one. Someone brought a guitar. A few of us started mixing paint straight onto the sand, cups and brushes passed hand to hand. What began as painting on canvas spilled into painting on skin, one friend ended up covered head to torso in colorful body paint, more sculpture than portrait, while others kept working the panels beside him.
There was no real plan, no assigned roles, just people arriving with the light, adding what they wanted to add, leaving when they wanted to leave. A dog wandered through at some point like it belonged there too. By the time it was dark, the panels were full, layered with as many hands as there were people on the beach that evening.
What stayed with me wasn't the finished canvas, it was the feeling that art, music, and people had folded into each other for a few hours with no separation between performer and audience, artist and passerby. It's a feeling I've wanted to recreate ever since.
Commissioned & Independent Murals
Not every wall I paint carries my own visual language, and I think that's worth being honest about. Some commissions ask me to step fully into a client's vision, others leave the door wide open, and both have shaped how I work.
For Fishburger, a local restaurant, I was commissioned to paint an ocean wave scene across a rooftop wall, deep blues built up in layers to catch the light differently throughout the day. It's one of the more physically demanding pieces I've done, hours spent cleaning and preparing the surface before a single stroke of color went down.
For Mogador Oasis, a camping car and hotel business, I painted a panoramic nature scene that wraps around their courtyard near the pool, with trees, hanging swings, birds in flight, and a coastline rendered almost like a window looking out rather than a wall closing the space in. Both of these murals were guided by the client's request: a specific mood of nature and calm suited to the spaces they run.
Then there's the piece that is entirely mine. A café owner offered me his wall with full creative freedom, no brief, no direction, just materials and trust. What came out of that is a mural of three overlapping faces rendered in orange and blue, rising above a small stylized skyline of the city. It's since grown into the largest mural I have in the city, and the one that most closely reflects how I actually see and paint when nobody is asking me for something specific.
