English Twenty Five
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Tewnty Five

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PREFACE

Since my student days, when on my short trips or walking tours of a country I found myself before the materialized "visions "of so1itary, but majestically elegant monasteries, and their expressively reticent vaults I have always been seized with a spontaneous feeling which usually envelops a person contemplating sacred relics.

This feeling grew on me in an empty cell where, "stupi fied "with a sudden humbleness, I tried to imagine our distant ancestors who, centuries ago were poring over parchments in their cold habitations and, holding our language, word and even letter in veneration, using their calligraphic skill to turn the letter into a piece of art. They enriched the art of a written word, brought it nearer to ornament, and then reached the consummate loftiness of miniature art.

Years later my search for life-giving roots, as well as for safe and steady haven for soul, necessary to a person living in the turning-point of life, brought me into artists' studios and that feeling, which overwhelmed me in my youth, has risen again.

I have met those, who like our ancestors in spite of all difficulties and spirit of the times (or, may be, owing to that spirit), having secluded themselves in their studios (as cold as were cold our hermits ' abodes), glorified in paints the beauty of Nature, nude women and bright faces of children.

Just at that time I got a daring idea that with their participation and help I could touch the sought roots, link with them, at least far a time, sense them and reproduce a concordant existence of a written word and painting.

And if my boldness - characteristic, probably, of all dilettante - allowed me not only to delve into the vortexes of different spheres, such as creative laboratory of an artist, especially, its industrial and handicraft "ins and outs ",. book printing and design, translation, editing and proof-reading, but permitted me also to "swim out", and pull in to the shore, I will not consider these three years of strenuous work, my spiritual, intellectual and physical endeavors to have been vain.

A true compensation for all my efforts would be the consciousness that I was granted a chance to merge into Beauty and have managed to share it with the others.

I remember a sentence of a physicist Erazm Darwin (a grandson of the famous Charles Darwin), who once said that, from time to time, it is necessary to undertake crazy "experiments, -nothing worthwhile comes out of them, as a rule, but if it does, then the output can be really amazing. (In the mornings he used to play the f1ute in his garden before the flowers). Neither wishing the former, nor claiming the latter, I submit the result of my playing music before the flowers' to your approval. If you don't hear the music, you would, at least, feel the fragrance of flowers, I will be grateful to you, and twice as grateful to those, without whose favorable help my undertaking could not have been accomplished.

Acknowledgements

First of all I would like to express my gratitude to those artists, who have responded to my proposal with juvenile ardor inspiration and professional skill, and, especially, to Faraon Mirzoyan for his constant and versatile cooperation.
To the art critics: Vighen Ghazarian for his circumstantial analytical introduction; to Eugenia Kalantarian for her participation in writing a review of the artists' creative work; to Saro Sarouhanian for his cooperation at the initial stage of this work.
To the translators: Anahit Karakeshishian for the English text; to Aghavni Atoyan for the Armenian version of the review.
To my friends and colleagues by profession: Anatoly Ivazian, Armen Voskanian, Artushes Mkrtchian and Vardan Pahlavouni for their encouragement and versatile help.
To my refa1ives: Arzouman Gyulumian for performing computer-aided works: to Juliet Yeghiazarian for her thorough proof-reading of the Armenian text; to my brother and sister David and Nvard Gyulumian for their tactful and, at the same time, sober advice.
To my family: my wife Marina Tatintsian for her unfailing interest and patience; to my children-9 year old Margaret and 8 year old Ashot, whose impetuous passion for drawing and urgent reques6 to be enlisted as the participants, strengthened my determination to carry this work through.

Mher Gyalumian


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