Artist Marie Brozova's recollections of the public drawing event in Prague's passage The Black Rose.
Thousands of people walk through the Black Rose Passage in Prague everyday. Only when I chose this frequented passage for public drawing of the drawing Black Rose in the Darkness, I got the chance to see the wide range of various characters that feel attracted to my colorful art. All of these people circled the exhibition of my drawings under the glassed-in ceiling, in this tastefully renovated passage, they shook their heads unbelievingly, at last they stopped at my easel watching me working – students, scientists, housewives with heavy shopping bags, spiritual yogis, shop assistants, doctors, nouveau rich with pedigree dogs, computer programmers, models, homeless people, hairdressers, Jehova´s witnesses, white-collars, seniors, foreigners from all around the world and also the members of security guard in passage, who were constantly reprimanded for hanging around my drawings and neglecting their work.
All these people liked my drawings for a different reason. Some people were attracted only because of the colors that matched with their curtains or sofa, others were delighted about the ideas, some hoped that they could buy one of my originals and get rich in future, some people gave me a lecture about the symbolic meaning of my drawings, that was so deep, that they even surprised me as the author. I learned to value every kind of attention; I learned to be grateful that everyone can take something from my drawings, which is in tune with him, in a similar way like everyone likes a different color of the rainbow.
Among all the visitors,most memorable was a rosy-cheeked smiling blond girl, who I regularly passed in the basement of the passage, where she cared for the rest rooms in an exemplary manner. Once she approached and invited me in her funny cute Czech with Russian accent to her small room for a cup of coffee: "I’ve been watching you. You are working all the time, you don’t eat anything, you don’t drink anything, and you don’t go to my rest rooms often enough." There was so much warmth and hospitality in her invitation, that it was not difficult to cajole me into going for a cup of luscious aromatic Irish coffee to her cozy little chamber that was made optically bigger by a large mirror, cluttered with many knick-knacks and also with large number of books and dictionaries. Irina, that was the name of the kind soul, was studying hard to speak Czech and English and she attended oriental belly-dance lessons, which she was practicing before the mirror listening to Turkish folk music.
I visited her small kingdom regularly. I indulged in her story telling, all kinds of fairy-tales she experienced in her real life in Russia, about the hero Tom-Cat, who used to catch geese and brought them home for dinner, about a witty rat that Irina befriended when she worked as a shop assistant in a chocolate store. The rat was satisfied with a piece of bread and never attacked the chocolate paradise.
Sometimes there was a dark stream of her own sad history leaking into her funny stories, sometimes the tears weledl up in her big green eyes, but she always wiped them smiling, and started to talk about all the beautiful things in the world full of possibilities waiting for her to make the most of them.
She was a symbol of abundant all-embracing womanhood, which is not enough appreciated nowadays. But all the same it is so nice to be invited for a cup of aromatic coffee, enter the circle of warm welcome, where there is no judging, only accepting.
VISIT MARIE BROZOVA’S VIRTUAL GALLERY
www.angels-fairies-unicorns.com,
where you’ll find both the drawings created during public events and in the studio.
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signed author prints ready for framing, postcards and more.