Welcome Home!

I am back in Calgary - It has been officially 2 weeks - I am transitioning and looking over all I've done over the past year. I feel incredibly blessed, and very happy. I've had so many incredible opportunities, and experiences, and I've spent a lot of time with wonderful people, and I've eaten a lot of good food. I've made good strides in painting, and I have a mentor. I want to thank the universe, greatly. 

This painting, below, was creatively based on the work of Salvador Dali - the surrealist Spanish painter whose works were often personal and symbolic. I created this painting in August when I was getting ready to say good bye to Peru and my friends and family there, and also to my life there - to which I had grown accustomed. I was feeling surrounded but alone. I am in the salt flats, my favourite place to go and ponder, when I had been living in Urubamba. On the way to them - the hike up, there were Cactus along the way, covered in furry almost fluffy cloud like looking cochineal bugs - white and powdery. Being a clumsy person I often fall into things - and things like cactus hurt - and the cochineals bugs are filled with a deep red blood like my own - reminding me on my way to the calmness and before the storm, that there will always be struggle, but to keep grounded, and to take time to be and think. The others in the painting are people from my present and past - acquaintances and friends. They go on with their lives, as I go on with mine. The calm is in the being, in the contemplation of the being, in the being with oneself. 

Tahira Nusrat Karim
​Tauska