Safe Hope Painting

Rachid Belmourida is a self-taught artist from Casablanca, Morocco. While a youth, he survived on odd jobs including installing satellite dishes, selling sandwiches, and making t-shirts. He participated in local community theater as an actor, set designer, and poster designer. He won numerous local art competitions. He left Morocco for Italy at 19 where he became a CNC programmer. He continued to work on teaching himself to paint, focusing on oil painting. He copied Old Masters and sketched the architecture of northern Italy. Rachid now lives in Chicago. He is settling into his new home and starting to show his work in local galleries. He has made appearances at DePaul University and the American Academy of Art where he discusses his art and abstract Arabic calligraphic techniques.