Not quite calligraphy... (OK, fine, not calligraphy at all)

As I may have mentionned previously, my mom has a particular affection for the embroidery of the region of Kalocsa, in southern Hungary (this has nothing to do with her cultural heritage--she's French-Canadian). She's expressed a desire for some years to have "pingálás" done in the basement, and to this end, for the past year or so, we've had a blank wall at the base of the basement staircase. However, this Christmas, everything fell into place, and my brother, his girlfriend, my sister and I finally got together and made her a pingálás.

Pingálás is an art form that, as far as I know, is specific to, and a particularity of, the Kalocsa region. It is the painting of flowers on just about any surface available, in a slightly different visual form than what is done in embroidery (and therefore different than what I do in calligraphy). I'll freely admit that I know very little about the art form, so I'll shut up before I say something that is just plain wrong. What I can say, is that the visual effect is beautiful and stunning and overwhelming (they paint the walls, they paint the hearths... Heck, if it's a flat surface, they'll paint it!) Since none of us have any base in pingálás, we just went ahead and painted; I went with my usual method, of attempting to replicate the impression of it being made of embroidery thread.

Since my brother and his girlfriend live outside Québec City, they didn't have the luxury of time in which to work. As a result, they both did drew the design. Mom has a book on pingálás, and my brother selected three elements from a particular image: the rose, the blue flowers (I'm not quite certain as to what they are supposed to be) and the fern-like branches. Stéphane (my brother) and Marie scaled the flowers up into a larger size, and then traced them onto the wall. Lianne (my sister) and I then got to work painting them. We initially had a slight difference of opinion on how they should be painted, as we were approaching them differently, but this was resolved by Lianne painting the blue flowers, and I the roses. As I split my time between Burlington and Oshawa, I only had a few days per week to actually paint, so Lianne was done much sooner than I (and yes, I was also procrastinating slightly). Once I was done with my roses, I also took some fine-point Sharpie markers (yeah, real fancy art tools), and lined the design, so that by separating the different colours, the design would be more defined and striking (apparently it does have this effect of bringing out the colours more).

It looks minimal as it is, and it is, but as Mom talks about it, this is only "Phase I"; it will apparently be expanded and embellished over time.

The Christmas gift that keeps on giving, what...!