Chiswick at dusk/ Season of Mud at W3 open!

Before you find out about the exhibition I witnessed opening tonight, please have a look at a few pictures of Chiswick. I took them on Thursday on the way to the Buddhist meeting.

Chiswick Park Station at dusk yesterday:

Turnham Green

Russian Orthodox Church in Chiswick

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In the morning, when there was no water, I really wished I were a cat....

Friday is becoming history and it's an important page in my own life story book.

Despite lack of water in the morning, an alien in the kitchen:

followed by a busy day at work, heavy rain and traffic jam on the way to the opening of The Season of Mud exhibition at W3 Gallery in Acton, I managed to get there and have a great time.

 How it all began? Two exiled Iraqi artists met a few years ago in Paris and started a project together. It resulted in a unique book of poetry and paintings which were put on show today. The opening was attended by Dr Abdulrahman Dheyab, The Director of The Iraqi Cultural Centre, other artists, friends and general public. In a relaxed and friendly manner, Yousif Naser and Salah Al Hamdani told us about their work on the project. 

It involved multitude of hours on the phone between London and Paris. They needed to get into the mind, heart and soul of each other in order to put their contents on canvas and paper. I was truly impressed.  The poetry and paintings were accompanied by saxophone music played by Amar Sabri Ahmad.  Selected poems (not too many) were read in French, Arabic and English. It was so good to see some friends whom I told about the event, meet old friends and make new ones.:-)

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Later on we dined at The Persian Palace in West Ealing. At the table next to us was a family celebrating a daughter's birthday. Mom and daughter kept taking pictures most of the time. How typical of our times. Finally I offered to take a picture of them all. It made them so happy that I received the first piece of chocolate cake! Regretfully, after the satisfying meal I had no space to fit it in, nor had my companions. To the other side of our table sat a Polish family of eight who were getting introduced to the Persian cuisine. Having had the starters with some naan bread, they were astonished at the sizes of the main courses arriving in front of each and every one of them. Not that I was watching them, just couldn't help noticing. 

At our table there was a lot of joking and laughter. It was an evening of enjoyment and lightheartedness.

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