Join with us online to meet two fantastic, local artists, Rosemary Keßler and Fizah Ungar. This will be a live session so please come with your questions.
This is me, Rosemary Keßler, artist, wife, mother, helpmate. Born in England in 1955 and at 26 years old met my German husband in a disco on holiday in Italy. I have been living since then in Germany, 39 years.
I am semi-retired now and had planned to do less but somehow it seems to always be more. Basically a very lazy person who turns out to be borderline obsessively creative and work orientated, constantly surprising myself in what I am capable of.
Unable to study art after leaving school I went into business administration, eventually helping my husband run our car parts business in Forchheim. Over the years I have studied art doing short courses at various art academies and have gradually gained a local reputation as an artist. I use social media to keep me informed what other artists are doing and to inform others about my artwork. When I have time I go along to the local home for disabled and the senior citizens group and make art with them too. I create contemporary art with watercolours, acrylics and pastels. I admire the impressionists and like painting in that style but also do abstract, line and wash and collages too. I also make Photographic Artworks using my photos, digitally enhancing and altering them in Photoshop. Sketching has always been an important base for my art and I run our local Urban Sketchers Group.
My name is Fizah and I am a new mother of an adorable little boy. My journey as Manjachen, the artist was not a direct one as I did not start out dreaming of becoming an artist. I have always enjoyed drawing and painting as a child, participating in numerous art competitions and winning some of them. It has always been my hobby growing up. As I grow older, I started drawing and painting less, focusing on my studies, graduating with a Bachelors of Biochemistry followed by Masters in Tourism Development. I later met my husband and moved to Germany to begin our lives together. The initial period of living in Germany has been tough, I didn't know anyone and was quite lonely. I was also learning the language, culture and places. I decided to start drawing and painting again. I started to sketch to recognise the places I see. Sketching started to bring me comfort from being far from home and adapting to a foreign place. I also started to make friends, like-minded people who share my love of drawing and painting. I founded Urban Sketchers Erlangen so more people can discover the joys of urban sketching like I do. I take pride in founding this group and bringing people together through arts. Arts have been pivotal in my integration in Germany. Besides being a full-time mummy, arts is my other full-time job. I love capturing memories to be frozen in time through my sketches or paintings whether its buildings, places, people or events. There is beauty in capturing what we see on ink, paint and paper to preserve memories. I make hand-bound sketchbooks to preserve my memories. It brings me joy to revisit my sketches and paintings and to tell the stories behind each page to my son someday. I hope I can help others encapsulate their memories through my work.
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