Issue 21

YAREAH Magazine Issue 21. February 2012

Imagination

Nenuphars, by Charles Courtney Curran Tribute to Lewis Carroll and Charles Courtney Curran Articles by Martin Cid, Isabel del Rio, Michael J Metcalf, Charles Kinney Jr, IZara and Isadora Sartosa.

Artists: Peter Akinwumi, Erla Axels, Elena Malec, Martin Askem and Ramel Jasir Project 365 by Tamara Linse

Day 6. Tamara Lindsay

YAREAH Magazine

Literature

Martin Cid, about this

by Michael J. Metcalf issue Q

.- Why ‘Imagination’?

Martin Cid.- Issue 20 was a joyful issue … tender, I would say. As you know, Yareah always related a classical author with an artist and in the issue 20, they were Mark Twain and Murillo (the painter of childhood). We wanted to be tender to contrast with the cold year of crisis which was ending. Now, in issue 21, we want to be beyond, to the world of imagination where all is possible, even the happiness.

Q.- ‘Wonderland’?

Martin Cid.- Yes, ‘Alice in Wonderland’… Lewis Carroll is going to be the

classical author and Charles Courtney Curran the artist. We want positive ideas.

We need a positive thinking to overcome the ugly 2011.

The current author and artist Allen Tager bets by an ‘Open Intuition’ to solve unemployment problem… me too.

Q.- Therefore, is it going to be a naïve issue?

Martin Cid.- Well, it depends on your idea of N a ï ve.

Naïve is sometimes deeper than we think since it is full of metaphors which need a moment of reflection. Lewis Carroll is a deep author, he can be entertained on a superficial reading, but like all great author, he has many levels of understanding and at the end, he is studying the human soul… A hard topic because it addresses the essential questions of our existence.

Q.- And how about current

“Women” by Peter Akinwumi

“A Perfect Day” by Ramel Jasir

authors?

Martin Cid.- Well, Peter Akinwumi, a fresh artist from Nigeria is going to collaborate too, and Erla Axels from Iceland and the romantic Elena Malec, the strong Ramel Jasir or the imaginative Martin Askem. As always, we would like an international point of view. The pdf is only a summary for the month. One month, I repeat, which has focused on giving hope and exalting imagination. Remember, ‘yareah’ means Moon and from the brilliant Moon, I wish a happy future.

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Literature

Imagination to Power

by Isabel del Rio

Social pressure can only be overcome with imagination. In my opinion, this is the message of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll, a mes sage that Yareah magazine wants to spread in January, with the be ginning of the year.

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he novel was published in 1865 (more than 150 years ago!) but it remains valid because it is full of universal fears.

The problem is not growing but growing to do what others want and never what you would like it.

Majorities catch you, they are supported by tradition, state and (even) mass media: ‘boy, you must earn money’, ‘girl, you must behave as your mother did’, ‘men and women (above all) pay the tasks and never protest’…

What could Alice do? Getting into a hole to escape. It was there and after trying to change her body and mind, shrinking and enlarging at the pace of fashion, when her imagination could prevail and to be, at the end, her own Queen (more or less this is what Arthur of Britain had said several centuries before)… More or less is what all of us wanted every morning, upon awakening and before beginning the imposed obligations.

‘If you want to write, to paint or whatever other hobby, do in your free time’, I have heart a thousand time. And I

Charles Courtney Curran “In the Luxembourg Garden”, 1869

have always thought ‘What free time? 8 hours of sensible work (no hobbies), plus 3 of move (I live in a great city), plus 4 of housework, plus 1 for me (at least to have a shower!)… are 16. I need the other 8 to sleep: therefore, my free time is a lie (better not talking about people with small children). I don’t have free time! Another thing is to try to convince cretins that Literature and Arts are not hobbies…

Yes, a bleak picture. Me, as Alice, have

entered several times in the hole, waiting for not being seeing by people who believes in TV and its slogans. Then, and after some minutes, Imagination started to fulfill with light and shapes that darkness… and maybe it is a smiling cat who appears or a blue butterfly, or maybe it is the force of being yourself which started to approach… to shake hands.

Yareah magazine wants to embrace imagination in this issue.

Peter Akinwumi

YAREAH Magazine

Literature

How Norway Fell through the Looking Glass

by Charles Kinney’ Bio “I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then. ” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

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orway is a strange place. Rich and liberal to outsiders, it is, in reality, a conservative and monopolistic society. Gay marriage is legal, but the state church does not recognize it.

The transportation and foodsupply network are each owned, respectively, by one (semi-private) company.

Some joke that it is the last communist state in Europe.

Norwegians praise equality, but haven't resolved income distribution in a petrostate.

They are polite, but shy of outsiders and foreigners.

They believe in an open society with easily accessible institutions, but are very private people overwhelmed with bureaucracy. They obey Photo: Utoya Island authority. They are naïve chilted and unfortidren when dealing with the world. fied.

On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Active members of NATO and the Atlantic alliance, their own government Breivik, a blond and blue-eyed Norweand military institutions are unprotec- gian, exploded a bomb in the center of

Oslo, devastating the main governmental building. He then drove to Utøya, an island resort of the ruling political party, dressed as a police officer, and

YAREAH Magazine massacred 77 children, teenagers and young adults of the ruling elite. They were protected by one guard.

Norway had fallen through the looking glass. A country that was on the periphery of violence was thrown into the center of it, by one of its own, disguised as a police officer, whom Norwegians have been taught to obey.

Even though the world had been changed and Norwegians now speak of July 22 as their own 9/11, even though it was much more similar to Oklahoma City, no one really questioned the government. The lack of fortified buildings. The ineptitude of the police and military (who are mainly white males) for arriving 90 minutes after the first reported shooting. How did Norway produce a white Norwegian male, whose manifesto was anti-Muslim, but pro-Jewish and progay?

The Norwegian media discussed males who rescued people by crossing to the island in their boats. It took the foreign press, verified by the Guardian, the Independent, and the New York Times, to discover that Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen, a Norwegian married lesbian couple camping across from the island, raced back and forth in their boat four

Literature

“The steins on the glass” by Martin Askem

times while being shot at and rescued Lesbian couple deserve their place in up to 40 people. An unselfish act, but Norway's heroic narrative: Roz Kavethese were not men, and they definitely ney: Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen were not heterosexual. It was not even saved 40 youngsters from the Utøya mentioned in Norway. massacre, so why have we hardly heard Norwegians are different people now. about them?

The nightly news in Norway has grown http://www.guardian.co.uk/commendarker. Rapes in Oslo. Stabbings on the tisfree/2011/aug/03/lesbian-couplesubway. Parents killing their children. norway-utoya-massacre The world is not what it was. A nation that has gotten very rich in Charles Kinney Jr roughly one generation but has not begun to question its Charles Kinney, Jr. is married to a Norwegian, actively involved in the role, its future, or its society United States, and is currently and institutions, which, con- based in the Republic of Georgia. trary to what is the percep- He has written for publications in Charles Greenland, Denmark, Norway, the tion in Norway, are still United States and the United Kinney Jr clearly slanted toward a cer- Kingdom. He has taught and lectain part of the populace. tured at universities and educatio- http://www.charlesnal institutions around the world. kinney.blogspot.com Norway went down the rab- He is currently on a two-year teabit hole, but has not woken cher-training assignment with the US State Department to the Republic of Georgia. yet.

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Literature

Lewis Carroll (1832by Ignacio Zara 1898) An author of many looking-glasses

H

e flatly rejected the Calvinist principle of original sin and he replaced it with the notion of innate divinity”, that is the opinion of Morton Cohen, the principal biographer of Lewis Carroll, about the author. Then, a man who was a priest, son of an Anglican priest and grandson of more priests, he arrives to admire the beauty of human body as the reflection of moral perfection, as they did the Roman humanists of the Renaissance.

As every well-read gentleman in the 19th century, he attended awful boarding schools, where he was unhappy, and he studied in Oxford, in Christ Church college, where he will be a teacher of mathematics the rest of his life.

Repression, coldness and strict rules were his daily bread, the life of a deacon. However, he found outlets for his imagination. He loved theater and he was an amateur photographer influenced by his friend Reginald Southey and Oscar Gustav Rejlander, a great artist from Sweden, pioneer of photography.

Lewis Carroll took more than 3000 photos and most had been destroyed by immoral. Afterwards, and thanks to Bloomsbury Circle and intellectuals as Virginia Woolf, he has been considered the most important photographer of the Victorian era.

His mind was restless and when he mastered this art, he abandoned it, but

never his boundless imagination. His first literary forays were in journ a l s : poems and stories, all very hum o r o u s.

But in 1856, he knew the family of Henry Lidell, a new dean who has 3 daughters, Lorina, Alice and Edith. It This photo was taken by Lewis Carroll was in a ‘Sylvie picnic with them, in 1862, when he de- and Bruno’ which achieved nowhere vised the plot (‘Alice's Adventures near the success of the Alice books. under Ground’); afterwards, ‘Alice in He also wrote math books, the most Wonderland’. Late in 1871, a sequel – known is ‘An Elementary Theory of ‘Through the Looking-Glass and What Determinants’.

Alice Found There’ – was published.

Definetely, an author of many faces, Other works are ‘The Hunting of the across many ‘looking-glasses’.

Snark” and the two-volume novel

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Literature

Imagination or Die

by Martin Cid

Remember the childhood, remember that waste long filed. We both are there; we both are lost in foreign waste words of future and borrowed dreams. You will forget this land soon; you will forget these dreams as soon as you buy the years of the maturity with the coins of memory and hate.

W

e’ve pretended to lose the keys to that world of rabbits and chess, that world that contains all worlds and all words, that Tower of Babel plenty of toys and nightmares, plenty of gifts, plenty of gods and devils… but you have still those keys and you remember it every night, when the prisoner child tries to scape to the jail of reality and logic, the jail of works, the jail of forgotten feelings…, jail of tears and cold sweats, jail of calmed foolish, jail of economy, risk and hate, jail of the fake human destiny, jail for the last of the humans, last human choice of the first chosen one.

Imagination is the road to humanity and the path to the most disrespectful of freedoms. Imagination for creating the book of silence Imagination to burn the secret of times Imagination to suicide and reborn Imagination to think and to die, to lie and to dream.

Imagination is the jail of conscience, the secret treasure hidden inside a never thought dream. Might you believe a never delivered lie? Might you believe into the deepest secret of foolish? We might, I can.

Someday, imagination turned one's back on me. Why you left me? Imagi-

nation is the capricious lady who can change her mind like that the forgotten lover has changed the lipstick. Imagination is the craziness of that fool who believe something can change in this insane world.

Imagination is the criminal who prays for life, who prays for freedom, who “Bipolar”, by Martin Askem prays for got death. the secret or the secret forgot me and Playing the stuffy game of life, I found I asked to myself: Where is the confiher cruelest secret escaping fast from dence floating? I received a true ansmy mind. In this dream, I tried to wer, the only answer I was never been caught the secret, I tried to grab it as prepared, the inner answer, the stupid strong as I can remember when I as- answer of the conscious. leep. No luck for the dreamer, no luck I forgot it. for the lover, no luck for the fantasy subject of the book of disasters. I for-

YAREAH Magazine

Literature

The meaning of animals in Alice in Wonderland by John Glass A lot of strange animals are living in the interior of Wonderland. Won derland is Alice’s mind and every of them is representing one of her personal aitudes. When Alice will be able to control them, she will be a responsible person, able to face the adult world.

T

he White Rabbit. Everybody has two interior guides. The white rabbit is the shy guide.

The Cheshire Cat. It is the second guide: Alice’ logical thoughts (which appear and disappear like a rebel cat).

The Mad Hatter and the March Hare.

They constantly frustrate Alice. Their obsession by the tea-time is representing the time, this ugly variable that nobody can control; less Alice, who is quickly growing. Soon, she will be an adult person, surrounded by strict rules that now she is trying to avoid.

The Dormouse. It is the companion of the previous two. It appears when time stops (but time only apparently stops).

The Caterpillar. Smoking and loitering, he represents the pleasures of life.

The Gryphon. It’s Alice’ strength The Mock Turtle. It’s her weakness.

The Knave of Hearts. Accused of steeling, it’s her guilt complex.

The Mouse. It’s the first creature that Alice knows in Wonderland. It’s her intuition.

The Dodo. It’s her creativity. In the tale,

he shows it by inventing words.

The Pigeon.

A Wonderland creature who believes Alice is a serpent.

Therefore, it is her confusion.

Bill. A lizard… her stupidity.

The FrogFo o t m a n .

The Duchess’s footman: ergo, the submission.

A very metaphoric world: Wonderland.

A Child’s Song. Ramel Jasir

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Literature

Jules Supervielle Jules Supervielle (1884–1960). His life was divided between Mon tevideo, where he was born, and Paris, where he was educated. His time was the avant-garde time but his South American background influenced him and his works rejected the Surrealism to focus on majestic subjects treated with everyday simplicity. Among his novels: L'Homme de la Pampa (1923) and Le Survivant (1928). Short stories: L'Enfant de la Haute Mer (1931) and Le Petit Bos (1942). Plays: Bolivar (1936). And volumes of poetry including Poèmes de la France malheureuse (1941).

The Morning of the World

after Jules Supervielle

Translated by David Cooke

A

9ll around arose a thousand noises, yet still so filled with silences that the ear seemed attuned to the song of its innocence.

All things alive and self-absorbed, the neighbourhood was a mirror in which creation moved, entranced, toward fulfilment.

The palm trees, finding a form in which to sway with pure delight, summoned distant birds to show them their leafwork.

A white horse encountered Man advancing quietly, while the Earth revolved around him, inspiring his astrological heart.

The horse twitched its nostrils and whinnied as if in flight.

Lost in its dream time the creature galloped away.

On streets where children and women seemed adrift like clouds, they came together to find their soul, moving from shadows to light.

A thousand roosters crowed, mapping out the landscape, the ocean waves hesitant between twenty landfalls.

The hour so rich in oarsmen and phosphorescent mermaids, the stars overlooked their images in those speaking waters.

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Literature

Rilke, a poet to emerge from the crisis Yesterday, yareah magazine knew David Cooke’s work. He is a poet, a reviewer and a translator. Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) has been one of his favorite poets and he has done a great job translating this excellent Czech author. Translating a poem is not rewrien it in another language? Yes, that is why only a poet can successful translate other.

Yareah magazine, fed up with 2011, wishes a great 2012. Maybe is good to start with a smart poet as Rilke, maybe him can hide so many horrible economic data and his verses (like the movements of a swan, like the walking of a panther) to raise us to other worlds: those of the imagination.

The Panther Translated by David Cooke

H

is weary gaze has slipped so often through these bars it now takes nothing in.

For him it’s as if there were a thousand bars, and then beyond them no other sphere.

The muscular rhythm of his stride that shrinks in ever-decreasing circles is like some vacant dance of power whose wilful energies subside.

At times his shuttered eyes flick open to let an image in, his sinews tight, as recognition stirs, then ceases, in his heart’s exhausted chambers.

Feather and bone revisited. By Eleanor Bennett

YAREAH Magazine The Swan

Translated by David Cooke

M

aking our way laboriously through lists of things to do, complexities that ensnare us, we are like the shambling swan – until, dying, we lose all purchase on terra firma, slipping away like the swan, as he settles, at first uncertainly,

into the water that buoys him, and flows on blithely in endless ripples, while he, so still and self-assured

Literature David Cooke David Cooke won a Gregory Award in 1977 and published Brueghel’s Dancers in 1984. He stopped writing for twenty years. A retrospective collection, In the Distance, was David Cooke published this year and has been warmly received. A new collection, http://www.faceWork Horses, will be forthcoming book.com/davidcoin 2012. His poems and reviews okepoet and translations have been accepted widely in journals such as Agenda, The Bow Wow Shop, Critical Quarterly, The French Literary Review, The Interpreter's House, Irish Press, The London Magazine, The North, Orbis, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Reader, The SHOp, Stand, The Use of English.

in the achievement of majesty, deigns to drift, untrammelled, where the current takes him.

Calling. By Eleanor Bennett

Eleanor Bennett

The demon. By Eleanor Bennett

Eleanor Leonne Bennett is a 15 year old photographer and artist who has won contests with National Geographic,The Woodland Trust, The World Photography Organisation, Eleanor Winstons Wish, Papworth Trust, Mencap, Big Issue, Wrexham Bennett science , Fennel and Fern and Nahttp://eleanorleonture’s Best Photography.

nebennett.zenfolio.c om/

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ARTS

Charles Courtney Curran

by ISartosa (1861-1942) He is a ‘childish’ painter. Not because he paints nice girls in nice places but because his soul was full of naïf thoughts, unable to imagine the ugliness of the life; oblivious to pain, disease or death.

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He was born in Hartford (Kentucky) but he moved to Ohio with 20 studying in Cincinnati, in the School of Design. There, his teachers encouraged him to go to New York entering in the Art Students League and in the National Academy of Design. Again his calcifications were fantastic and he could go to Paris, the center of art at that time.

In Paris, he was student of Benjamin Constant (remember his exotic themes), Jules-Joseph Lefebvre (remember his exotic beautiful women) and Henri Lucien Doucet (same exotic, nice atmosphere), friendly painters who never suffered from critics as the contemporary post-impressionist or avant-garde artists did. He got along with these successful painters and with the rich society: different mentions of honor in the Salon of French artists and in the Universal Exposition in 1900.

His technique his precious and nobody like him knows how to capture the beauty of flowers and landscapes and the contrasts of shadows and lights, almost enlightened, near the Spanish Sorolla.

Back in New York, he set up in Cragsmoor and wrote very many interesting articles about art in the magazine Palette and Brush with his wife, Grace.

There, together with other artists (Edward Lamson Henry, Eliza Pratt Greatores, John George Brown, William

Holbrook Beard, Helen Turner, Austa Sturdevant, George Inness Jr., and Frederick Dellen Baught) he founded a colony of working, where they lived in harmony and painted the beauty of the scenery.

He was elected to membership of the National Academy of Design in 1904 and was also a member of the Macdowell Club, the Allied Artists Association, the New York Watercolour Club, the American Watercolour Society and the National Arts Club.

A painter of sucCharles Courtney Curran “In the cess, a childish Luxembourg Garden”, 1869 painter, but the world works by of a child, sometimes is enigmatic and Lewis Carroll, both ‘childish’ but both metaphoric, very suitable for visual arts. enigmatic and full of secret meanings.

This month, Yareah magazine is going Read also: to compare the plastic works by Char- http://yareah.com/?p=763 les Courtney Curran with the written

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ARTS

The Three Graces: take pity on the ugliness Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia. They were daughters of Zeus and the nymph Eurynome.

Eurynome lived in the oceans and it is possible that she was a siren (sometimes, she was represented with a fishtail) and her daughters inherit her aquatic grace to dance as waves, in that subtle way which only goddesses can do.

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But Eurynome give them much more since she was close friend of Hephaestus, god of fire, as she was the only one who had helped him in his sufferings (he had been send to hell a cause of his ugliness). Then, her daughters not only could transmit their jolliness to everybody around their aquatic influenced but they gave the strength to keep on dancing and singing from days: Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia were essential in every celebration, even in Olympus agapes.

Half-naked and disheveled by joy, they have been represented dancing and enjoying from ancient times: Botticelli painted three slim smart young women; Rubens, three fat sensual ladies; Courtney Curran saw them as spiritual beings (nothing to do with the appetites of the flesh).

Apollo, god of Arts; Mercury, god of winds; and Dionysus, god of wine (therefore, of the earth) gave them their favors too and then, the Three Graces controlled all the elements (earth, water, air, fire and ether (art)).

All around them was happy and still today, we admire them for this… but, remember, their mother took pity on the ugliness too… Who was actually their mother? Maybe the White Goddess? Maybe the Mother Nature? ** Everybody in every time has represented the Tripartite Goddess. Not only the Western tradition but in Asia, Africa… see examples.

Erla Axels

Other article about Charles Courtney Curran: http://yareah.com/?p=786

**

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ARTS

Artists with guts and Soul: Martin Askem by Isabel del Rio I have been teaching art history from years. ‘Who do you prefer: Velázquez or Goya?’ My students used to ask me as if we were speaking about football teams.

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nyway, I have never been angry with this question (repeated year after year, month after month) because I think if you live a subject with passion, you finish as a football fan. ‘Well, Velázquez is incredible, the best technique a painter can achieve but I prefer Goya,’ I usually answer. ‘Both of them are very creative, don’t misunderstand me, but Goya painted with guts, unable to be politically correct, always his true soul is on the canvas?’

Yes, it is not easy to put so much passion in a work, a part of yourself is delivery to the viewer for nothing, only for a moment of understanding which doesn’t always happen.

It is better to be Velázquez, if people don’t understand him, at least they remain openmouthed shouting: ‘What difficult! How he could paint it!’

Yes, my admiration always will be for painters with guts: Martin Askem is one of them. He is not painting portraits of pretty faces, he is painting the many faces of a person: in the end, his face. Pleasure, pain, anxiety, excitement, disappointment, courage, anger emanate from some beings who mingle with their peers in the confusion which is our world, our life. Sometimes, it is a world in black and white, but when the The Legend of john Merrick.

Martin Askem color explodes we see again the explosion of tion a passion which goes beyond the picture frame, to the questions which are emerging of his paintings. which splashes and catches us.

And you, who do you prefer: Velázquez or Goya?

Yes, it is impossible to be indifferent in front of Martin Askem’s works. One thousand and one opinions can be done See more: Martin Askem, 'The Saviour of Modern Art' because everyone will speak about its soul…, normal reacwww.martinaskem.com

YAREAH Magazine

The Perverse Beauty of Mary Magdalene. Martin Askem

Hypnosis Martin Askem

ARTS

Alcoholic Father. Martin Askem

The Night Croydon Fell . Martin Askem

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ARTS

Project 365

by Tamara Linse This year, I am posting a photo a day on Google+, Facebook, and my blog, which I’m calling Project 365. It’s inspired by my friend, the artist and writer Pierre Hauser, who is on his third year of a similar project based in New York City, which he posts to his Facebook page.

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f course, I take many more photos than I post, many shots of the same things, and I’m looking for very specific things, which I’ll discuss in relation to the photos. Then I use Photoshop to crop and enhance. My goal is to maintain the natural colors—not to use digital enhancement to force the image into the surreal— but I also push them a bit, trying to get closer to my perception than to what the camera Day 3. Tamara Lindsay. simply captured. In cropping I’m looking for a certain compositional balance standing atop a mountain peak will always be dull and never and an intensity and singularity of focus, and I may blur the capture the feeling of vast space and distance.

Above all, I’m trying to get the viewer to see the beautiful background a bit to sharpen it.

I’ve also realized, there are some photos that cannot be world all around us, to focus on things, and I do not take taken, that cannot capture the lived experience. The moon that viewer’s attention for granted. It is imperative that the over the horizon, for example. To get the image to mirror photo be interesting or aesthetically pleasing in some way. experience, you have to do serious things in Photoshop with I’m asking for the viewer’s time and attention, and I really the size of the moon and the balance of light. A photo of try to make the experience worth it.

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ARTS

Day 10. Tamara Lindsay.

Day 16. Tamara Lindsay.

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ARTS

Peter Akinwumi, just on the other side ‘Entangled’, this is my favorite Peter Akinwumi’s work. Sometimes, society or destination surpass us. We are an empty mask surrounded but other yellow (envy?), red (anger?) or brown (selfis hness?) masks. We don’t understand anything while spiders weave their network. We walk with close eyes and nobody can help us… Perhaps only the viewer because he/she is just on the other side, away from the web.

Isadora Sartosa

It is peculiar to be Sagiarius, a fire horoscope.

All of my life, I have been in love with fire and I can spend hours looking its strange shapes, shadows and colors. For other people, fire is a synonym of destruction, I also know its devastating conse -

Peter Akinwumi

quences, but the ashes are always to remember the past and to pay for things to come.

‘Freedom’ it the title of one of Peter Akinwumi’ works. It has impressed me and for me, his freedom is fire. The li berty of building a new world without forgeing our roots.

Isabel del Rio Peter Akinwumi

YAREAH Magazine

Peter Akinwumi Peter Akinwumi is the exponent of the Dot-Beaten Metal concept. A visual Artist with a difference. He picked up a rare Art form, known as repousse, modified common techniques and evolved rare and stun- Peter Akinwumi ning representations, to the http://www.artslant.c delight of art lovers . om/global/artists/sh

ARTS

ow/42525-peterakinwumi

Peter Akinwu mi’s works are smart. Pure lines, stylized figures, to tems of singu lar force. He is from Nigeria and all the ex pressiveness of African Art is present in his colorful sets of people working, lo ving, trave lling… In short, living.

Entangled. Peter Akinwumi

His works are bright, he has an optimistic view and creates worlds which invite us to enter and live there.

John Glass

In my opinion, rhythm is the word which defines Peter Akinwumi’s works.

They are a wonderful dance of colors and shapes, all of them in proportion and in relationship with the warm atmosphere created by a combination of abstract and real forms.

You can not go fast in front of his works, they are full of hid den meanings.

Izara Secrets. Peter Akinwumi

YAREAH Magazine

ARTS

Tribute to Women

by Ramel Jasir Regardless of the race or class, women throughout human existence have always sacrifi ced for their families unconditionally. Many women have sacrificed their lives and dignity so that their children could eat and so that their husbands could survive when faced with death. There have been women who have picked up the sword, sticks, the gun and most importantly.... the "pencil" to fight for their families and humanity. A nation can rise no higher than its women.... you are our first teachers... this one is for you!

A Man’s Song y your grace alone I stand here as a Man Not just any Man but a Man who overstood your will and chose to fulfill and not change one manifestation of your design...

Without words you sent me signs on how to combine proper thought & Mind Transcending time, devoid of space to inhibit your Epiphany...

Resonating within me as soft tones in symphony... spiritually lifting me because you know that I need you...

As I breath you remain my rock, my shelter my reason for knowing and not just believing...

Feeding me from every angle of the square as I stare on in bliss because this Man was chosen...

Although woven in steel my heart submits to reveal undaunted appreciation that you alone would love me, regardless of my insecurities your purity remains dominant and supersedes all written history...

And the first story was about you and how man tried prove his birthright amongst your congregation...

Foolishly wasting time trying to define and rename you...

You are....

B

Anacaona. Ramel Jasir

Anacaona, acrylic /charcoal on canvas 16 x 30 2011 my Mother...

Anacaona is a painting Ramel Jasir had wanted to create for some time.... it was his depiction of Anacaona, also called the "Golden Flower". She was a Taino cacica (chief) of the island of Hispaniola when the Spa niards invaded in 1492. She was eventually executed by hanging after being accused of conspiracy.

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ARTS Jewel of a Moment, acrylic on hard foam/apoxy resin 10 x 12 2011 A lot of children run hard lives. Their mothers don’t have time to hug or kiss them. But sometimes, this has happened: ”Jewel of a Moment, Jewel for Eternity’.

Jewel of a Moment. Ramel Jasir

The Color of Love, acrylic on hard foam 16 x 22 2011 The Color of Love was the first painting in which Ramel Jasir used his wife's image: ‘I often use paerns using dots in my paintings in which I was inspired by my love for Aboriginal Art. I re member when I created the painting the feeling of having a natural flow when it came to the co lors. I had no real plan in regards to the design but everything came prey naturally. I remem ber my wife saying how much she love the colors and said "because it is the color of love".... she smiled and it became the name of the painting.’

The Color of Love. Ramel Jasir

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To me art is nothing but pleasure by Isabel del Rio ‘To me art is nothing but pleasure’ Erla Axels said in the issue 5 of Yareah magazine and I claim today: Erla's paintings reflect the joy of living and the joy of living in this Earth. They are part of nature and its basic ele ments. Earth, air, water and fire, what else?

E

rla is from Iceland, a paradise of reflections, yet sparsely populated, where Mother Earth still speaks in blue whispers, maybe green.

Do you know that centuries ago a geographer was confused and changed the names of Greenland and Iceland. Yes Iceland is green and brown, full of stones with copper spots.

Erla Axels

Strong constructions that no human has done, they arise from the blue background of Erla.

Strong, powerful, fruit of a safe world, of an optimistic mind and of a refined technique.

I like the abstract because it allows you to dream, to see beyond the media and to delve into another world where everything is possible because imagination is free.

Abstract, Erla, Nature. They are ingredients of some paintings which invite to a smiling dream. **See Erla Axels’ gallery at the Main Page.

Erla Axels

YAREAH Magazine

ARTS Erla Axels Erla Axels was born in Reykjavik, Iceland 1948. Erla studied art, at The Reykjavik School of Visual Art and later at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, N.Y. She has had Erla Axels many solo and joint exhibitions, held in Iceland, Norway, France, http://www.erlaaCanada, Sweden and USA. Erla esxels.com tablished an art gallery workshop, Gallery Art-Hun, along with four other women. The gallery was the first one if its kind in Iceland and ran for twelve years. Around two years ago Erla built and established her own workshop gallery located just outside Reykjavik, Iceland. From the panorama view of her workshop she extracts endless power and myths from the nature which appears in her works. Erla works with three kinds of material, pastel on paper, oil on canvas and mixed media, which is a technique she has been developing through the years.

Erla Axels

Erla Axels

Tribute to the Flowers by Elena Malec Very many classic authors and artists have honored the flowers: Robert Burns, Ann Taylor, Sylvia Plath, Philip Levine‌ Now, Elena Malec wants to be added to this smart list with her impressionistic soft pastel Elena Malec paintings from imagination.

Elena Malec was born in Bucharest, She is welcome.

Romania.

A graduate from the University of Bucharest with a MA in modern languages, Elena pursued a career Elena Malec in education and research.

Without a formal training in art http://www.elenashe eventually followed her pas- malec.blogspot.com sion for drawing, sketching, doing watercolor at different ages. From 2008 Elena resumed drawing and painting on a daily basis learning and studying art on her own. Art is for Elena an expression of her freedom of creating from imagination but also inspired by daily subjects, still life, her travel photographs.

Whether is charcoal, watercolor, pastels or colored pencils each medium is approached by the artist in its unique spirit to convey serenity, beauty, joy of color and shape.

Elena believes art is a realm of beauty and harmony and art’s mission is to inspire meditation, bliss, positive energy, peace.

Elena Malec

Elena Malec

Elena Malec