Turns the world
Revolves the sky dome
Seasons unfurl
Still painting at home
Time for flow
And a planetarium show
Do you know?
Will there be snow?
There's lots of news
I'll try not to confuse
No guarantees
So bear with me please...
...Rembrandt looks confused. It'll all become clearer as you read on...
... to wrap up the year, the postcard art print of 2021's Carpet Pages IV: Flying Carpet is now available at www.carpetpages.com where you can also see an archive of the whole project series…
…to continue wrapping up the year, view the End of Year Student Show online at www.vaishaliprazmariteaching.com where you'll see faces painted by Merve Bilgel, Anastasia Doran, Susan Dobrian, Sara Hall and Nadia Khan...
…ah, she's seen the light, and it's becoming slowly clearer although there is still a lingering trace of confusion on her face. There is also a hint of a smile on Christian Seybold's beautiful lady, which is promising. I love all faces, old and young... and this is one of the most beautiful portraits of an old lady I have ever seen. She's luminous...
...and the brass in this brush rest/paperweight also reflects the light. It also reflects a year of work and collaboration with my husband Patrik Prazmari. This brush rest and paperweight in one is made of ebony wood from old piano keys. Old pianos long past their lives are destroyed; Patrik Prazmari hunts them down to save the keys before they are destined for the scrapyard and crushed. Then he lovingly restores the beautiful dark ebony wood and shapes them into these elegant brush rests. He carves 5 valleys into the brush rest which is just perfect for my 5 brushes for the 5 elements to nestle in. The bottom is weighted with polished brass so this gorgeous art object for your desk has a double function as a paperweight. It is finished with our 3 seals in classic Bank of England red sealing wax. Our 3 seals comprise Patrik Prazmari's geometric PP, my signature floating island and my Chinese name seal. It was a labour of love and marks the inaugural phase of our second iteration of objects for The Perfect Brush: beautiful and thoughtful objects for the perfect desk. The once-piano key has been given a new life and saved from the scrapyard. All the fingers that have lovingly caressed it over the years to create music reside in the ebony that has now been put in the service of art; its final resting place is a rest for beautiful brushes - or qalams or pens. The memory of sound-once-played morphs into brushstrokes-yet-to-come. May its latent music inspire your future paintings and letters...
…you could also nestle the long-awaited 5 new Old Goat brushes in its crevices. If you're after any more last minute New Year's gifts, there is now the option of Brushes Gift sets available at The Perfect Brush https://www.theperfectbrush.co.uk/shop...
... and give yourself (or someone else) the gift of winter paint relief and paint the cure to this man's melancholy. Dolor, or melancholia, is its own separate, special and uncategorisable feeling. I once heard it described as ‘pleasure in sadness’, or a kind of yearning you can’t put into words, the Russian Тоска or perhaps the Portuguese saudade. They say you’re either a wall person or a window person, when it comes to cracking down to working in the studio. We’ll replace his interior scene with a window, and I leave you free to paint the cure. Which, for me, might be Fiji, Samoa, the Maldives, Vanuatu or any island in the Pacific, where I'm not going this January. Console yourself in good company...
...Good company is also present at our monthly meetings. The Zoom link is via the Forum https://www.miniaturepaintingforum.com or here's the direct link:
Vaishali Prazmari is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Vaishali Prazmari's Miniature Monthly Meeting 18.1.22
Time: Jan 18, 2022 18:00 London
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89068530810?pwd=N3FrTUJFcEw2WVBZKzB2bGVyUlh0Zz09
Meeting ID: 890 6853 0810
Passcode: 022332
Join by Skype for Business
https://us02web.zoom.us/skype/89068530810...
...Lars von Trier's film Melancholia showed the importance of company at the end of the world. Don't worry, it's not the end of the world. If you're prone to melancholic feelings I recommend watching this film with someone else in January. It's beautiful and haunting...
… And this one is meditative and calming and perfectly safe to watch alone. It'll restore your general sense of contentment...
… Aha! Happy now! Balthasar Denner's lady has a definite smile. What's the secret to her bliss? She's painted on copper, and her image has lasted many centuries in this pristine condition, as if it were painted yesterday. My much anticipated Oil on Copper series is finally ready (after a long wait I know - better late than never!) and starts in February, warming copper to pull you out of the end of a long winter. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities...
...and that was a lot of news, and I'll leave you with some London Christmas curiosities and pictures. First we went to the London Planetarium, which is now in Greenwich. Anyone else remember the Baker Street Planetarium? I took my dad and 2 kids. Out of the 4 of us, one was noisy, one was bored, and one snored. Can you guess who did what? (Hint: none of these were me! I enjoyed it immensely.) From big to small... we saw a puppet theatre Pinocchio production and then made a miniature model theatre at home. Making toy theatres as a kid in part made me into the artist I am today, I just love them and now we collect them. I'm slowly introducing them to fairytales/folk tales/stories. What about you, what was your favourite toy as a child? What was your favourite fairytale? I'd be really interested to know. Apart from anything to do with 1001 Arabian Nights, I loved Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Gulliver's Travels, Baba Yaga, the Nutcracker at Christmas and now actually I like Jack and the Beanstalk (I like the idea of magic beans). We also made Christmas angels/fairies for the tree - my mother started a tradition of making a Christmas craft annually and I remember making these with her in Hong Kong. It's gratifying to make them now with my own kids. One year we made a Yule log with my mama; this year I made a Yule log from Abel & Cole's Yule log meal kit which is not cheating, it's efficient ;-) and turned out not bad. If you want real Christmas baking, atmosphere and general cheer head to Central London - we did and we saw this year's absolutely amazing decoration and lights. They outdid themselves I think in part to make up for 2020. The entire facade of Fortnum & Mason was turned into a giant advent calendar-clock and on the hour, a nutcracker came out like a cuckoo clock. Truly amazing! London this year reminded me of one of my favourite Christmas movies starring Danny DeVito - Deck the Halls - in which he wants to outdo his neighbour in Christmas decorations. He wants his Christmas lights to be seen from space! I'm worried that my husband was a bit too inspired by that film. We have lights all over the house, including outside. Lastly, here's our Christmas tree. Can you guess why there are no longer any baubles on one side?
Copperly yours,
Vaishali Prazmari
