Words of wisdom from our friend Heidi Trautmann

1058 Old Country Club Road

Roanoke, VA  24017

USA

Hi All,

    I add the USA because we still have many friends around the world.  And because we have traveled we know the world is the people we met and not what we see on the news. 

I recently received an email from our friend Heidi Trautmann.  We met her and Kalle, her husband while we were in North Cyprus.  Heidi is an artist and writer and very wise woman.  I asked if I could share some of her email to me about the release of her most recent book about the arts of North Cyprus. 

Ru

Terra Firma

PRESS RELEASE :

If you want to paint a chair, you must become one …….

Heidi Trautmann’s new book: ‘Art and Creativity in North Cyprus,  Volume II’

Presentation of the book and Exhibition at the National Archive and Research Centre in Kyrenia on September 29 at 17.30 hrs.

“If you want to paint a chair, you must become one or if you want to paint and describe a tree in a painting or in a poem, you must become a tree to know its roots, to feel its skin with scars and knots and to know why the branches reach high to learn the rules of the kingdom of the winds….and if you want to know a people you have to become one of them.

You have to sit with them and talk, see their eyes change colour when you ask questions; you have to visit their homes and drink their coffee and see their souvenirs on shelves in their home; you need to know the games they played as children and the books they have read and the hopes they had from the very beginning till now, the tears they spent on mishaps in life, the anger or pride they have felt when things went wrong.

I learnt to read their paintings and their poetry, in them I found their ways of judging the situations they live in.  I went to see their theatre plays over many years. ……”

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Heidi with her newest book ready for distribution.

http://www.heiditrautmann.com/paintings_2011_2014.aspx is Heidi’s website which is filled with art and wisdom.

“You will live among so many beautiful trees. I love trees, they were my first friends and I hid all my treasures among their roots.”    Heidi Trautmann in a recent  email to me.

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Heidi’s lino cuts of her trees.