At the year's end, some images.
This enormous work, an embroidered watercolour, covered most of a wall in a long, calm, white room with windows opening onto green foliage.
It was at one end of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Madrid, Spain, an exhibition of what was called "four-handed" works by the Spanish artist Miquel Barceló and his mother Francisca Artigues. The exhibition was called VIVARIUM.
Vivarium: noun plural -iums or -ia (-ɪə)
a place where live animals are kept under natural conditions for study, research, etc
(This proves there is no substitute for wise local friends to travel with.)
A note on the exhibition explained the artists' method of work and their inspiration.
Unusually for an art show, the room had a long table set down the middle, with flowers, plates, glasses, bottles of wine. The table cloth had been embroidered by Francisca Artigues. One of the most remarkable things about many of these works of art was that they were used daily: at meals where people gathered, where food spilled, wine splashed.
Not all the works were used as tablecloths.
Some had been used as bed spreads.
Some had never been used at all.
What was striking about these extraordinary images was the mix of real and fantastical. Even though each embroidered creature was painstakingly naturalistic, this way of uniting objects from disparate worlds within the same space created a surreal universe that made you look at everything anew -- the most ordinary pair of scissors or a bicycle floating in the midst of jellyfish, seaweed and zebras.
The playful, witty, imaginative world of the works made anything appear possible. A bird could be observing a gecko, a hen could be flying around with butterflies and whales. A leopard could be sniffing a palm leaf.
A new world was on the white walls: where unlikely beings could live in harmony.
May the new year bring you good times, friendship, comfort.