In one of the paintings of Pirouza Gozeyan, a woman is looking out of one eye while the other is shut tight. “Perhaps I am looking at the world with only one eye, since I haven’t fully recognized it yet. It’s easy to deceive me and I’ve remained a very simple-minded person in this world. I don’t understand people and can’t be like them. Most of the people I come into contact with are tricksters, liars and corrupt.

They have also cheated me, because of my simple mindedness, because of my belief in people. I’ve always suffered as a result. I’ve always thought that most were like me, open, sincere and trustworthy. But it turns out that they aren’t. Even today, I have dealings with such swindlers”, Mrs. Pirouza sates during our conversation. Mrs. Pirouza and her daughter Meri live in the depths of Yerevan’s Kond neighborhood. It is nearly impossible to locate their house without some assistance. Mother and daughter, both painters, live on the first floor of a two-story house that is partially in ruins. They spend the cold winter days in the larger of the two crumbling rooms since it’s the warmest. Their canvases adorn the peeling walls inside. When we arrived the room was freezing and an electric heater had been switched on, but it isn’t used much because of the high electricity costs involved. They still haven’t paid the 13,000 dram bill for December and the bill for January will soon have to be paid as well. But they haven’t the money to do so. Mrs. Pirouza says, “The paintings aren’t selling. During the cold winter months it’s impossible to work outside.” Mrs. Pirouza was born in Kond but later the family moved to the Komitas area. She spoke about her hard life and how she lived with her stepmom. But that life be damned she noted. They were forced to leave the paternal home, with Meri, and take refuge in this “apartment” which was handed to them by a benefactor friend who had left for Moscow. Advertisements for “Baxi”, “Mercury” and other such heating devices really irritate Mrs. Pirouza because while they are freezing in their ramshackle apartment the TV is full of commercials advertising the good life. “It’s as if everyone is living in the 21st century and we’re still stuck in the 19th. But I am quite fond of the 19th century. People back then were much kinder and more human”, states Mrs. Pirouza without a hint of despair. “We hole up during the winter and hibernate in our den here. We only go out during the summer”, says Meri. It’s only possible to work in the summer, to go outside, hawk the paintings and make some money. There’s also the possibility to paint new canvases. “Going without really gets to me. I want to have lots of money, to buy paint and canvases in order to paint. I want to paint right now but I don’t have the materials”, Mrs. Pirouza says with more than a tone of anger in her voice. In the past, she was able to sell more of her paintings. Oftentimes customers would come to the house and buy a few canvases at a time. Others would come to purchase paintings for their collections. Nowadays, they don’t buy much. I sold my most expensive painting in 2000, for $100. When things get tight the best paintings are sold for just 1,000. One of the paintings nailed to the wall of Mrs. Pirouza’s apartment is called “Chaos” and another “The Mob”. She claims that artists are ahead of the times and that they perceive the future. Mrs. Pirouza painted these two works quite some time ago after getting a sense of the March 1st events to come. Three female themes dominate the works of Mrs. Pirouza – a woman’s sadness, grief and the tormented eyes of one in love. “They are either seated or standing, either sad or happy. If I am painting a woman, I paint her alone”, says Mrs. Pirouza, pointing to the canvases. “I like the number three most of all; it symbolizes the three saints, the three ages. I don’t like the number four. But the number three is the sign of success, three apples, three pomegranates…” Mrs. Pirouza depicts angels in her paintings without faces. They are faceless because they are angels. It’s a general theme. “If it’s a general theme, I don’t paint faces. And by not painting faces I want to say that everybody can be like them. If I want to paint someone specific I paint a specific face.” Mrs. Pirouza has trouble explaining and interpreting want she wants to convey by her paintings because they take shape on a moment’s inspiration. “Right now I couldn’t say what it was I wanted to paint or what I felt at the time. I painted whatever it was and I can’t explain the painting afterwards. For example, sometimes I go to a place and get inspired but I only paint the experience months later.” Mrs. Pirouza remembers with delight how it was she and her friends who first started to line up paintings by the Martiros Saryan statue. But now those old friends are gone, having left Armenia, while she still travels with her paintings to the Vernisage they created. “What we wanted was a place of our own, a place for artists to gather, to display their works and where the public could meet the artists. Let the public recognize what true painting is all about. Slowly the paintings started to sell and later the generations changed. Then came the “cold, dark years” when we literally froze and sold next to nothing. But we stood there, sipping vodka to stay warm”, relates Mrs. Pirouza. The odyssey of Mrs. Pirouza started when she escaped to Latvia from Armenia, leaving her father to travel the world. “I was born a wanderer. I haven’t been able to find my place and thus I want to travel”, she laughingly says, adding that she’d pack her bags and hit the road again if it wasn’t for the fact that Meri doesn’t want to leave Armenia because she loves the country so much. “I also dreamt that Meri would be the type of girl to want to travel with me and that we’d spend our lives roaming the world.” Meri started to paint at the age of three. Mrs. Pirouza never taught her daughter how to paint. Meri picked up a brush on her own and began to scribble on paper, painting little birds. Now however, the necessities to paint don’t exist. There is no paint and no water, especially hot water to clean the brushes and paint jars. There are no canvases and since the paintings aren’t selling, there is no money to buy new ones for new paintings. Meri plies her trade on Northern Avenue. Passersby approach her and ask that she paint their portraits. Meri confesses that sometimes her portraits don’t turn out so well which leads to some angry words by the customer. Sometimes they overpay her or just hand over some change out of kindness. Meri notes that, “the stuck-up bourgeois ladies don’t give her the time of day and just pass on by”. “I like to paint nature, scenes from Kond, churches, birds and cats. Yes, I enjoy painting cats”, states Meri. She catches cold easily, which makes it impossible for her to work during the winter. The right side of her head has started to hurt from the cold. Meri mostly works along Northern Avenue, a place where she has experienced both good and bad days. She states, “The best thing is that I’ve made more than a bit of money there, by meeting up with kind and famous people. Unpleasant things have happened to but I try not to take them to heart.” Despite the difficult and harsh conditions, Mrs. Pirouza and Meri keep three cats in the house. Oftentimes they don’t have enough money to survive on, especially during the winter, but they always meet up with kind souls and it’s the reason that the two of them have continued to get by till now. Mother and daughter are inseparable. They leave the house together and do practically everything together. “What influences me the most is Meri’s frame of mind at the given moment.  If she’s in low spirits, so am I. If she’s in a good mood, then my spirits are lifted as well. We really have a sense for what the other is feeling because we’ve gone through a lot together”, says the mother. Mrs. Pirouza always held on to one dream and it’s a dream that has come true – to become a painter. “I’ve become a painter and do not dream of anything else. But Meri still has many dreams to realize.” For her part Meri pines that, “I dream of having a house, a comfortable home, where we at least have a normal bathroom. We don’t even have that here. The pail serves as our toilet facilities. Then too, like all other girls, I dream of meeting my knight in shining armor”, says 34 year-old Meri, blushing at the cheeks.