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Yeranuhi Soghoyan

Napkin Art: Gyumri’s Noush Petrosyan Sketches Café Patrons

A wide and warm smile is etched on her face, and her expressive eyes get rounder from confusion when Gyumri’s Gallery 25 director Aleksan Ter-Minasyan introduces Noush Petrosyan, creator of the “Garnan 20 Akntart” project, stressing that the works on napkins were born in the children’s café where she works. (“Garnan 20 Akntart” – Spring’s 20 Blinks)

The petit painter tries to avoid giving an interview, arguing that she hasn’t much to say. She then agrees when I tell her we’ll only sit down and talk.

19 year-old Noush is a second year student at the Gyumri Fine Arts Academy’s graphics department.

To pay her tuition, Noush has been working at a children’s café for the past four months showing them how to sand paint.

“Lessons followed by work doesn’t leave much time to paint. Thus, when I have a moment of free time I pick up the nearest napkin and start to draw,” Noush says with a laugh.

Her subjects are the café’s customers. They come for a coffee, sit, and are quite relaxed. The young painter prefers this rather than making them pose.

“An elderly man visited one day. He ordered a jelly doughnut and sat without moving for twenty minutes. I was getting upset because I don’t like it when people sit there motionless. I want them to move around.”

Drawing on napkins isn’t for the faint of heart. The material is fragile and there’s no room for error. 

“You can’t erase a wrong line or make sudden movements for the napkin will tear,” Noush says. She tries to work quickly. The young painter says that her subjects usually get uncomfortable when they learn they are being painted.

Now and then, her napkin paintings end up in the trash; of course not intentionally. “Sometimes, the café workers will pick up the napkins and use them to wipe the tables or they think someone has scribbled on them so they crumple them and dump them in the trash,” says Noush.

“What I have discovered while working at the café is that Armenian women like to strike a Picasso-like pose while seated; resting their chin in their hand. It reminds me of Picasso’s “Absinthe” painting. I call such drawings of mine the Picasso pose.”

For now, café management hasn’t complained about the disappearance of its napkins. Noush says they do not know that she uses them for her drawings. She’s invited the managers to an exhibition and they’ll probably make their opinion known when they see how the napkins have been used.

Noush’s works will remain on display at Gallery 25 (Berlin Art Hotel in Gyumri) for the next two weeks.

Comments (2)

Adour
Thank you Hetq for continuing to provide readers such wonderful and inspiring human stories such as this one. Your work in presenting both small and large aspects in the life of Armenians everywhere is very much appreciated by so many of us, and your site is a must-visit for those interested in Armenia and Armenians.
Hetq
Ardour, thanks for the kind words. And please spread the word about Hetq.

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