The Room of an Artist and Nature Lover

by Jasmin Obermoser

The small cosy room had a wooden floor for easy cleaning, with a beautiful mandala meticulously hand painted. The walls were plastered with art work in many different styles, ranging from abstract oil paintings, to traditional and delicate watercolour flower studies.

All around the room are rickety shelves decorated with realistic acrylic artworks of landscapes. Upon those rickety shelves balanced hundreds of sketch books and paint pallets.

On the hand made pastel pink and blue swirled roll top desk in the style of doctor Seuss, sat a half completed sketch of a pretty girl sitting on a boulder at the top of a mountain in a field of flowers.

Hanging outside the small window hung hundreds of glass beads and flowers casting dappled light on the floor blending with the mandala.

In the corner of the small room was a pile of plush homemade cushions, surrounding a table with children’s artwork of a vase of flowers expertly presented in a delicate green Japanese vase. The flowers are clearly from the magnificent garden that is visible through the cottage window and the beads.

On the far side of the room hung a floor to ceiling dream catcher all of white, surrounded by photos of the woman with her family and young students.

Through the door into the small and homely kitchen…

In the kitchen you could always smell the delicious smell of food from many different countries. On the shelves are stuffed bright cook books from Japan, France and even India. On the counter there are bowls of fruit and veggies waiting to be eaten.

In the cupboards were crammed pots and pans clanging together at the slightest touch.

The Frankie calendar on the wall was flipped onto March and in bold letters on the 10th read: New Zealand art competition (Diorama category!) On the dining table sat and impressive wooden handmade diorama of a mossy forest with a barn owl lurking in a tree looking down on a tiny mouse on the forest floor. At the base of the diorama in neat printing read the name of the piece: The circle of life.

In the conjoining living room a fire burns merrily on chilly days but on that day it sat cold and empty, as the sun was shining bright. Above the couch that has been painted to resemble a spaceship hangs a magnificent oil painting of outer space. More plush handmade cushions were placed around a sunny spot with candles, crystals and bright sharp shakti mats.

In the small bedroom in the attic there are shelves fitted into every available nook and cranny. The bedroom could almost be a library except that again there are lots of different artworks in different forms hanging from the sloping ceiling, and a small yellow bed in the corner.

The shelves are perfectly organised into categories and in strict alphabetical order. First organised by genre, then by author and finally by title.

Outside in the magnificent garden there are rows of herbs and vegetables, a huge orchard and a fragrant flower garden. In the corner there is a small area where the names of the same children that had painted the flowers were written in neat printing on ice block sticks and planted into the ground next to huge sunflowers.

To me this space tells me that the user is a young lady who loves children and nature and has an incredible knack for all forms of art!

— Highly commended, Tamariki category, Anna-Marie Chin Architects Writing Competition 2023.

Jasmin Obermoser is in Year 6 at Queenstown Primary School and wrote in response to the following prompt: "Describe a space, any space, that tells us a lot about the person who uses it."