"Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage"

Discovering the obvious can be very embarrassing and quite frustrating when it comes to sharing your "discovery" with your peers. Comments like "have you been sleeping for the past 2 years" when you recount your amazement at the multitude of functions modern technology offers, of something like " you claim to be a bookworm but you've never heard of Alice Munro?" are quite a spoiler towards your need to boast about your newest discovery.

Well, what can I say, I've never heard 0f Ms Munro (a.k.a "Canadian Chekhov"). To my defence I was never a big fun of the short story genre, thus my complete ignorance of its Queen! I prefer my fiction to be longer, like a 7 course dinner plus a Brandy and a cigar at the end. The idea of just going in for a starter is, to put it mildly, completely unappealing. 

Then, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage came my way, ("came" is an understatement, it was forced upon me by my dear book club co-members) and that's how I discovered what for many years has been obvious to millions of readers around the world. Alice Munro IS positively, undeniably, most definitely an astonishingly talented author. Because it takes tones and tones of talent coupled with technique and imagination to be able to master so much is such a limited space. 

The plots are thick and unpredictable, but the turns are very smooth. The characters strong and engaging. No ink is wasted for frivolous descriptions. Each word has a well thought purpose and the reader is given the opportunity (or the challenge) to discover it for themselves. 

I will be rethinking my attitude towards short stories and I pledge to read more of her collections starting with Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You and Too Much Happiness. I cannot promise about my attitude towards dinner duration tough!

The Burden of the Early Spring Lilly

They are the first sign that earth is waking up from its winter hibernation yet again. 
They pop out unexpectedly and are quite brisk about it. 
They cannot help it. They are nature's messengers, burdened with the mission to deliver the news. 


Sometimes they are fooled. Humans have messed up this planet so much, the balance is lost. They come out and end up covered in snow. Still, they are sturdy little things. When the snow melts, they are still there, a little bruised, but there. 

This year they fulfilled their mission uninterrupted.
Spring is finally here. The lilies told us so.

Egg Fried Quinoa / Κινόα με Λαχανικά

Συνταγή στα Ελληνικά προς το τέλος της σελίδας!

Quinoa is one of my favourite grains. I discovered it about two years ago, when a contestant on the Greek version of Top Chef used it to make a low fat, healthy alternative to a high-calorie traditional dessert. 

I was intrigued and went on-line to check it out. The abundance of recipes amazed me and on my next shopping trip I bought a small packet to try it out. 

Two years later, it has become a permanent resident in my cupboard. 

"Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk"

About a month ago I stumbled across this website .
Then I read this book. 
And then I decided.

I am going to quit eating sugar! 

That's big. That's huge! That's even bigger and huger than when I quit smoking. At least when you quit smoking you can turn to sugar to help you through the withdrawal period. But this is like substituting one addiction with another isn't it?

I quit smoking - officially - on 16th June 2009, the day before lower back operation No.1 I had my last cigarette outside the entrance of the hospital, and made a promise not to smoke again. I didn't go cold turkey though. First I used nicotine gums and patches, then I read a book a friend bought for me. I was struggling. I can admit it now it was not easy. I had made the decision to quit smoking and loose weight while recovering from said lower back operation. I didn't have just one, I had three watermelons under one armpit and it was only a matter of time before all of them would fall and brake. 

So my back broke, again, along with my stomach (not from the nicotine gum but from the huge amount of painkillers and other pills I was taking) and that's when I actually quit smoking. Mentally that is. The physical act of lighting up never happened again since that day in June, but in some dark corner of my mind the hope that I will again feel the pleasure of this addiction, was silently burning. It was put out quite unceremoniously by the ICU doctor who said that if I smoked again my stomach will be completely ruined. 

I've been nicotine free since September 17th 2009 and even though I catch myself thinking about cigarettes once in a while, the thought does not last for more that 1 second. I just dismiss it and move on.

I want to do the same thing with sugar. I want to look at the cupcakes, frosted cakes, cookies and cheesecakes and see through them, bypass them and expel them altogether from my conscious and unconscious mind.

It is going to be my biggest challenge so far.... and it starts tomorrow!

The Nature of Being Still

These carrots used to be alive. Enclosed in soft brown, nutritious earth, with their green leaves swinging to the whims of the autumn breeze. 

Then, human hands forcefully pulled them out, stack them in a brown box, shipped them halfway across the world,to  end up on a chilled self of a American hypermarket. 

They were again picked up by the hands of a considerate cook, who trimmed them and cleaned them and then roasted them. And thus they died. 

I found this photograph a couple of months ago, posted on one of the numerous food blogs I subscribe to  (unfortunately I don't remember which - if anyone recognises this photograph please let me know and I will give the appropriate credit to the photographer). 

I loved it the moment I saw it. Its genius lies in the simplicity of the composition and the positioning of the objects which creates the illusion of depth. The perspective is very well balanced and the colours are well matched, combining the vibrancy of the orange with calmness of the grey-purplish background. These carrots are by no means dead. The photograph has immortalised them.

I've decided to try and capture these elements in a painting. It seemed easy at the beginning but it is proving to be quite a challenge, finding the right tone of orange and brown and green. I want to infuse them with life. 

I've never liked the term "dead nature" that is frequently used to describe this type of paintings. There is nothing dead about them. So many paintings are so alive that you can almost reach and pick up the fruit and flowers. That is why they are called "still lifes". Life cought at it best moment, immortalised for ever.

My attempt is very modest compared to the Dutch, German and Flemish masters of the 17th century. It is not yet finished. I hope by next week I will be able to capture the life of the painting, even for a tiny, flinting moment.

Belgade in March...

... is downright ugly. During the day, that is. When the sun reflects off the bear tree branches and onto the grey buildings. Even the spectacular view, from the top of the imposing Kalemegdan, for centuries presiding over the confluence of the two rivers, is not enough to dispel the sense of winter decay. 

But when the sun sets the city changes. It becomes alive under the orange glare of the lights. The cafés and the bars are full of people, young, old, it doesn't matter. They drink, eat, shout. A scenery full of energy. It's like winter is only there during the day. At night, it's summer all year round.

Next week's Preview - Last Week's Review

It's been a while since my last post. 


I've been very busy. 

• One computer died, a new one arrived. I needed time to mourn. Time to overcome the trauma and face the new one without apprehension. 
• Went for coffee with a new friend, a very inspiring young writer!
• I finished a painting and started another. 

• Made the most amazing Vegan Chocolate Mousse ever!
• Started to contemplate the idea that all relationships end and separation is something that might have a good bad side (????) I know it doesn't make sense. 
• Almost bought a new camera. The one I had in mind turned out not to be as great as it advertised and so the search continues...as a well as the crappy photos on this blog. I apologise and promise to find a new camera soon.

For all these and some more I will talk next week, because now I'm packing my small suitcase for a weekend in Belgrade (Yuppi!!!)

See you on Monday!

Was she dreaming of him? Picasso's “Le Rêve”

Last week a bunch of us gathered in an impromptu painting studio at an underground garage and had a go at painting one of Picasso's abstract works called "The Dream" (“Le Rêve” ). 

Picasso La Reve ,1932

We were not alone. We had the help of two academically trained painters and some nice bottles of Spanish Tempranillo wine. (Spanish wine in honour of a Spanish painter).  

It is a painting of a woman, sleeping peacefully as she reclines on a armchair and while I was trying my best to copy the brush strokes of the master, I could not help but wonder who was that voluptuous, blonde. Was she his lover? Her semi-naked body implied that and her tilted head, with that slightly hedonistic smile surely could not have suggested otherwise.  

I went home and looked it up. The woman immortalised in this and many other paintings was Picasso's teenage "erotic muse",  Marie-Therese Walter whom he met on a Paris street around 1927 when he was 45 and married. He painted many pictures of her and had a child with her and four years after his death she committed suicide.

"La Reve" as well as many other paintings belong to his period of distorted depictions of reality with oversimplified outlines, eye catching colours, and covert sexual innuendoes.  But this painting became famous not only because of the erect phallic symbol carefully hidden in the upturned face of Marie-Therese, but because it would have yielded the highest price on record  for any piece of art, a whooping $139 million, hadn't his owner, the Las Vegas casino mogul Stephen A. Wynn, accidentally slammed his elbow through the canvas. Fortunately the painting was repaired but the sale never took place. 

I hope the extensive research and time I spent learning about the painting, the model and the creator himself, will count towards some much needed atonement after my attempt to copy this masterpiece. 

Work in Progress & Humming Suggestions for the Weekend

This is what I'm working on at the moment. A lighthouse  in the sunset. When finished it will go to a very special new friend as a birthday present. I just hope I will finish it on time. 


As I was working on the painting today I was humming this song....

I love the song and the video clip! I am sure I will be humming it all weekend....


(P.S. I apologise for the poor quality of my photographs so far. I'm in the process of choosing and buying a new camera. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated)

Dream and you shall paint

In the middle of May 2010 I had a dream. It went something like this: I was married to a very famous painter, I did not know who he was. We lived in an enormous house with a garden enclosed by high walls. In my dream I saw myself arriving home one day and finding a bunch of people waiting in my entrance hall. When I asked what was going on someone said that they were gathered there expecting the great painter - my husband - to come and paint for them. I did not know where he was. He was missing from home and I had no idea of his whereabouts. So the daunting task of completing his unfinished paintings fell on me. I was terrified, never having touched a brush let alone paint with it. Some people from the group became restless. I had to act quickly. Picking up a brush I started painting on the half finished canvases to mixed responses from the crowd. "You will never be as good as the master", "we want our money back" and so on and so forth. However, there were also some encouraging ones "try harder, it just takes practise and patience" a soothing male voice whispered in my ear. I knew then that my husband - in the dream - had died and I had to take care of his work from now on....


A strange dream by all means, don't you think? Dr.H though so when we talked about it and gave me some very helpful insights about its meanings and symbolisms but none of them included the exhortation to go and paint. 


Two weeks after the dream I received an email from an acquaintance about an American painter who was giving art classes to anyone interested. That was my cue. The universe was definitely telling something and I could not just ignore it. I signed up and the rest is history...ok I am exaggerating a lot actually, but I was able to  paint quite a few pieces and I continue to paint until today. Mind you I am no Rembrandt, not by a million, but I managed to fill the walls of my apartment, met some great and seriously talented people along the way and most of all explored a side of myself that was hidden for many years. 

My 1st attempt in painting with 

Watercolours