The Tyrrhenian Sea in Tusa, Sicily
A few years ago, I spent three weeks in Tusa, Sicily. I was alone for much of that time, and I drew constantly.
One morning, I sat by the ocean with my sketchbook. The sun burned my shoulders, and sweat dripped down my back. I tried to draw the water. I tried to capture some likeness of it, to make it belong to me, even for a moment, on a small sheet of paper. But the water resisted being held.
I looked more closely. The waves were violent and tender, turbulent and rhythmic. They carried a kind of depth I could not translate. I drew, erased, redrew. Still, something remained beyond my ability to trace it.
Maybe that was what drew me to it most, the impossibility of possessing it.
Years later, I find myself drawing that water again. I return to its memory, to the particular rhythm of its waves, to the feeling of standing before something that cannot be contained.
Now, when I draw it, I am not trying to capture its likeness. I am reaching toward something remembered.
I draw its water, longing to feel again its wrath and its romance.
Tania Qurashi • she/her • New Jersey
Tania Qurashi (b. 1993, New Jersey) is an artist whose work explores cultural and racial melancholy through symbolic objects, vessels, and figurative and floral motifs. Working primarily in painting and drawing, she engages with imagery tied to her Pakistani and Guatemalan heritage, using still life compositions to examine personal and collective histories. Qurashi received an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Qurashi has exhibited her work in group exhibitions including Pentimenti, the Asian Arts Initiative, Long Beach Island Foundation, Fjord, and The Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts Museum. She has attended residencies including the Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Vermont Studio Center and Jentel Artist Residency. Tania Qurashi received a 2026 Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
