During the mid-1980s, Al-Baqsami began using a more colorful color palette reflecting the mood of the times. She also started heavily utilizing the silk painting techniques she learned earlier while living in Africa. But instead of applying them to silk, she used them on canvas by mixing acrylic with glue. This work is a portrait of Samson and Delilah, figures from a biblical story. Delilah cuts off part of Samson's hair, which is the source of his strength, and thus hands him to his enemies. This painting contains the first symbolic ‘border of secrets’, a motif Al-Baqsami used to depict the hidden inner world of her figures by cutting through the center of the painting with a border, and filling the space below it with symbols and patterns. It appears heavily in her later works in the 2000s.