By Heidi Trautmann

On the occasion of the anniversary of the association, four members active in the arts organized an exhibition to which they invited some artist friends to participate with them in the exhibition at the Ismet Güney Art Centre in Nicosia. It opened on October 03 for one week.

While I was having my exhibition in the same venue, I met some of the exhibitors, especially Halil Öztunç who seemed to have organized the exhibition. We had a good talk.

I then went to visit the exhibition some days later, actually on the last day, and met my friend Nermin Anil, one of the exhibitors,  who was on duty in the morning hours and she showed me around. Nermin is also the President of the Kyrenia Inner Wheel Club and is immensely engaged in many social matters, especially in environment. She has been an active painter for many years, a very romantic painter, who regards nature as a living species, equal to us humans, and this shows in her paintings, giving nature species a soul, demanding respect from us.

There were altogether ten exhibitors, four of the association plus four guest painters and two guest ceramic artists. Some of the paintings by the retired military officers gave me an idea of what their experiences were, how they see war and misery, very touching. One contribution by one of the retired officers was a caricature on the abuse of women. Well done. Traditional Cyprus scenes are often a favourite theme for the painters, in acrylic or water colour, women, children and family. Values. Values of home. On the same level were some handicraft works such as silk worm images or tiles painted on.

There was some lovely ceramic art with fascinating glazing and some sculptures; one of these days I will visit their studio, the ClayArt Studio. They are doing very good work, some of their members have participated in the Vounous project in Catalköy.

Art activities in groups become more and more common, not only young ones but adults meet regularly and work together, it is a most sensitive thing to do in times like ours with people sitting at home and watching TV and getting sick over it. In this way they will appreciate nature even more and I would love to see that even more are getting involved with the arts on a regular basis.