This is the end of the first week of the Ovanes Berberian(my dad) Outdoor Painting Workshop in Idaho. I come up every June to help him run the show and get into some painting and creating myself. My dad has created the most artistic setting for the students to paint still life's outdoors. As part of the Workshop, every Tuesday and Thursday nights there is demo in which my dad will paint an entire painting live in front of his student audience. This year we were to have a special treat, with Peace's son Casey Wilkinson, master pianist, playing all sorts of exquisite musical pieces (some of which he composed himself), along to my dads painting.
Last night was quite a performance due to the fact that my dad chose the biggest canvas he could find to demonstrate a landscape painting on. The combination of Casey's beautiful playing and my dad's intense painting was enough to make any art buff weak in the knees. Painting straight for almost three hours, my dad had pretty much finished the entire painting that was ten times the size of him. With vibrant colors that sang throughout the piece, that could only come from years of experience, I heard one of the students ask if he had done any drugs in another lifetime. Drugs or no drugs, it is something to see. My dad records every demo night and has a collection of his paintings on dvd. I always wish I had a recording of my some of my favorite classical artists painting my favorite paintings so I could pause and rewind if I wanted to.
