Photos from the exhibition

Before the opening yesterday, I took some photos of the exhibition.

It's always a great feeling to see the paintings, which are normally in a folder at home are hanging on a wall.

The opening day was wonderful... so many of my friends came and I also met some new people and had great fun talking with them. THANK YOU everybody for taking time to come and see my paintings there.

And I'm so happy, that I sold 3 paintings already...

And... I got such a wonderful surprise !!! Flowers from my great friends Erika and Udo !!!

I was deeply moved and happy beyond words about this great gift !!!

THANK YOU !!!

Already excited

Yesterday we sent off the frames to the gallery, bought my ticket for the Shinkansen and I'm already overexcited to travel to Kobe, have my exhibition and meet all my wonderful friends there.

And today I got another wonderful surprise: I recieved my members card from Kuronekoyamato-art ^___^ I'm soooo happy that I'm a part in this association now as well !!!

For my upcoming exhibition in Kobe, please check my previous blog-entry at:
http://yuriatakagi.blogspot.com/2010/09/exhibition-in-kobe-23-28-september-2010.html

And here are some more paintings I will exhibit and sell there:

~SOLD~

Exhibition in Kobe 23-28 September 2010

From the 23rd til 28st of September I will have a Solo-exhibition in the "Galerie le port" in Sannomiya, Kobe and I would like to invite everybody, who likes my art to see it.

I will be there, too and I'm already excited about this event.

For further information, please feel free to e-mail me martoo1973@yahoo.de

Here are some of the pieces, which will be for sale there:

****SOLD ****

~SOLD~

***SOLD***

~SOLD~

Hope to see you in Kobe ^__^

ICA 2010

When I came home today I found the catalogue of the ICA 2010 in my mailbox.

The "International Contemporary Arts Exhibition" was in June in Seoul and Cheong Ju in Korea and it was a big event.

Many famous artists from Korea, China, Japan, France, Italy and Germany took part and I'm happy and excited, that my painting was there, too.

Now I can enjoy the catalogue with all those beautiful works... a pity, that I was not able to go, too... well, hopefully someday, when the kids are grown ;)

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Here you see my painting "Butterflies", which took part in the exhibition.

In October it will again be exhibited in Tokyo. I will announce more details later.

News about my upcoming solo-exhibition in the galerie "le Port" in Kobe will follow soon...

Aso Mountains

Another painting inspired by our hiking trip to Aso and Kuju...

done with acrylics, watercolor, pens and airbrush on paper. Size is B4, original available.

Karatsu

Last weekend, we drove to Karatsu and visited a famous spot there, called "Nijinomatsubara" (虹の松原), which means "Rainbow out of a pine beach". The beach has the shape of a rainbow and along that beach is a pine-forest. It belongs to the most beautiful spots in Japan.

We went up to the castle there and enjoyed the view...

After a delicious menue in one of the restaurants there, we drove up to the mountains and went to see the waterfalls there... there are about 8 of them and you can hike all the way beside them. But it was too hot and so we just took a look at some of them.

 

We drove further up in the mountains and enjoyed the view. Here you can still see Nijinomatsubara in the distance.

Up in the mountains, there is a plateau with a shrine small lakes and beautiful nature.

We spotted a lot of mushrooms (those are not edible, but they look beautiful)...

...and enjoyed nature there. It was so much cooler than down at the sea. There were a lot of frogs, some snakes, Dragonflies and Butterflies there.

Someday I want to come here, when the Lotos is at full bloom.

on our way back the kids had fun playing in the river. :D

Bayern Fukuoka

 

 

In the evening we wanted to go out and try the German restaurant in Nishijin.

They have 3 different draft beers (Hefeweizen, dunkles Hefeweizen and Krombacher), a German menue and typical German foods.

Brezel...

Schweinehaxe with Semmelkloss and Sauerkraut...

Schnitzel and more...

 

 

Penne a la Moni

It's still very hot here and looking at the pines, the sea and the beach outside I always feel like on one of our mediterranian camping-vacations back in the 80s. One of my fave dishes on those trips were my Mom's "penne". She always cooked at the tent and the ingrediences and possibilities were limited.

Due to the climate over here, I wanted to cook them by myself.

The recipe is quite simple... you need some pancetta or bacon and eggs. You fry and mix both and add some salt, garlic, pepper and nutmeg. Then you add already cooked penne and fry everything, til the penne are getting a little bit brown and crispy.

The trick, my mom did, was frying some bread-crumbs in an additional pan and when they are brown and crispy you toss them over the penne, egg and bacon and mix everything.

Brought back a lot of great childhood memories, made me a little bit sad and melancholic, but it also made me very happy, that my kids loved the "Penne a la Moni" and told me I should cook it again soon.

And look, what a fantastic sunset we had today ^____^

Kuju inspiration

Had this idea while hiking at Kuju national park... done with acrylics, watercolor, pens, airbrush on paper... and a HUGE dose of Wayne Jackson's music... original available...

Kuju Mountains

 

The next day, we hiked to our next location... a small inn/Ryokan located in the middle of Kuju mountians. You really HAVE to hike there, about 5 km, to an elevation of 1303m over sealevel. So it was a big adventure.

 

From time to time it rained, but it was nice and cool and we did not mind at all...

There you see our goal. It was actually a former training-place for buddhistic monks who lived in the mountains about 500 years ago.

After we arrived, we enjoyed the hot spa there and slept very deeply, because it was cool and quiet at night.

 

The next day, we wanted to climb up on Daisen-san, the second hightest mountain in Kyushu.

 

The climb WAS tough... it took about 4 hours to reach the top...

 

and up there was fog, but we were happy that we made it.

 

On our way down, the weather got better and you can see how far we hiked... down in the valley, there is the inn, where we started.

And here is a photo from our way back, when we reached the valley again... Yes, we REALLY were up there... we could not believe it ourselves...

 

The next day we hiked back to our car at the other side of the mountains. This time we took another route down over a still active volcanic mountain with lots of steam and sulfur-smell in the air.

We had to hike all the way down there to reach civilisation again.

The sight was breathtaking !!!

On our way back, we found lactarius Volemus... (Reizger in German). When you touch it, white milk comes out and it has a smell/taste of haring. I LOVE this mushroom and I took some of them with me.

Back home again, we fried them and relaxed from our last hiking trips.

Aso and Kuju are only about 200km away from our home, so I hope we can go there again someday soon. Spring and Autumn must be wonderful there, too... and I'd love to see some matsuri (festivals) there, someday too.

Now I'm back catching up with e-mails, letters, painting, etc...