The Visit to the Artists’ Studio (Summer 2016)

YARP hello from Isabelle!

My eyes stretched wide with amazement when my mother, Elise, Helen and I stepped into the studio. There were paintings everywhere I looked! We were visiting painters’ studio. As we walked around, admiring everything, Abgar Khachatryan, one of the painters working there, told us that he painted with his brother and father. His wife made scarfs and then painted pretty designs on them. Basically the whole family did some kind of art. Even Abgar’s little girl who I think was four, drew with chalk.

Abgar showed us where ‘his corner’ was. His corner was basically where he painted. Abgar mostly did collages. His most frequently used materials looked like different kinds of metals. Abgar’s wife, Ani, called Elise and I over to show us how she made scarfs. She already had the outline of a design on a scarf done so she finished it with us. She told us that once you put one drop of paint on the leather, the paint rapidly spreads. At the end, she told us that once she paints that background of her designs, she adds salt on them. After that you add salt on the scarf and you leave it for a while. So that’s exactly what we did.

For a second I literally thought that the walls were the paintings. My mother was standing in front of a painting while Abgar was explaining how most of the paintings in this room were his father’s, Sergey Khachatryan’s. There was this one painting on which my eyes rested on. On one part of the painting it looked like there was a photo of a little blond haired girl. I looked closer. It was no photo, it was a painting! This guy must be an expert!

My mother picked out about a billion paintings that she wanted to get, and poor Ani had to bring them all out so my mother could make her final decision. “You and Isabelle can each pick out one painting of your choice.” said my mother. Apparently Elise had one in mind, because her response was “Really?”. There is this one painting I want…” “Which painting is that?” I asked her. The painting is of a girl wearing a green dress and holding a black kitten.” We had just read the  Warrior series by Erin Hunter (I recommend it!), so we were really interested in cats.  Abgar thought he knew which painting Elise was talking about, so he shuffled around some of the paintings and came out with a painting. I knew it was the right one because when he brought it out, Elise’s eyes literally turned into hearts.

I asked Ani if the scarf we put salt on was ready. She said that it wouldn’t do any harm if we checked on it. We walked over to where the scarf was kept. Ani took the scarf and rapidly shook it. All the salt fell off. In place of the salt were now little white dots. It really was a good background design.

Today was a nice experience and I would gladly return. I learned a lot today, (good thing I know where we keep the salt at our house!) As we were leaving, I was thinking that this would make a good blog post, and in fact, I don’t think that my hypothesis was  wrong at all!