FEAST OR FAMINE

The National Gallery of Georgia is holding an exhibition of Alexander Bazhbeuk-Melikov’s Artworks in Tbilisi, Georgia, from 10 January to 24 February 2017. The Georgian National Museum Dimitri Shevardnadze National Gallery has dedicated the exhibition to the 125 th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Bazhbeuk-Melikov and the 50 th anniversary of his death. Alexander Bazhbeuk-Melikov (1891-1966) is a prominent 20 th century Georgian artist. Of   Armenian heritage, he was born in Tbilisi, Georgia. He graduated in 1910 from the Tbilisi N. Sklifasovski School of Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture of Fine Arts Promotion Caucasian Society, and continued his studies in Moscow, Russia. In 1913 he was conscripted into the army, and returned to Tbilisi in 1917 where he worked as an art teacher. Bazhbeuk-Melikov was influenced by the European Colourists, and Luminarism, after which his paintings became lighter. He liked the colourists of the Venetian School, Spanish paint...

MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

The Hidden Life of Trees: What they Feel, How they Communicate - Discoveries from a  Secret World (2015) is the tree version of the 1973 book The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird – the book that started other ‘Secret Life of’ books. But this book is not part of that series.  The author Peter Wohlleben was a forester in the Eifel mountains of the Rhineland municipality in Germany for over 20 years. The forest he managed included spruce, beeches, oaks, and pines. In this book he includes other trees, such as birches and aspens. Wohlleben begins with the statement that trees are social beings. They share food with their own species, they communicate through scent, they register pain, and they have their own form of defence. He writes of reproduction, gender, age and aging, skin, soil, health, regeneration, hibernation, and a lot more. He writes about insects and birds and animals and humans – and how they all need trees. His theori...

Wise inspirational words from Chief White Eagle (Ponca): Go forward with courage When you are in doubt, Be still, and wait; When doubt no longer Exists for you, Then go forward with courage. So long as mists envelop you, Be still; Be still until the sunlight pours Through and dispels the mists -        as it surely will then act with courage. MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).