Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
A mother and daughter are putting their artistic talents on display in their first joint exhibition ... and whilst it shows blood ties are stronger than water colours, on canvas it's a different story!
Talented Nina Mommsen and Snejana Novosedlova have been showing their work all week at the Casa dell'Arte gallery in Zinj in an exhibition that ends tomorrow.
Nina, 35, from Russia, said: "We have been in the kingdom for the past two years and this is my first exhibition here and Snejana's first ever exhibition.
"Various artists who have seen her work have told me about how wonderful her work is and that she is going to have a good future. She is going to be a super artist, I know it!"
Snejana, 15, a Year 10 student at the British School Bahrain, feels that art had been infused within her ever since she can remember holding a sheet of paper.
"If someone gave me a piece of paper, a sharpened pencil and an eraser, I ended up drawing just about anything."
Her mother explains that while children normally love to play games and be outdoors most of the time, Snejana always preferred to stay in her room and paint or draw.
As is clear in her collection 'My Colour Spectrum', the teenager has a special place in her heart for animals. She has also tried to inculcate her love for cartoons and has already decided to use it as the theme for her next exhibition.
A far cry from her daughter's choice of subjects, Nina concentrates on the study of the human form. Nina said: "Snejana likes doing what I don't. Her art work is so much more in detail while mine is more abstract."
While she is proud of her daughter's creations, critics have described Nina's work as stunning.
Her collection titled 'Colour of Passion' was inspired by her visits to South Africa. The paintings depict the rich colours, culture and diversity of its people, especially women.
Nina said: "I never planned to be an artist. I was extremely keen on painting as a hobby but later on took it up more seriously and joined an art school.
"That is also probably why my three children are interested in art. Our home is very colourful and we have various paintings adorning our walls."
Owing to her various travels abroad, Nina's works have reached the hands of art lovers in Russia, South Africa, France, Germany and Oman, aside from Bahrain.
She is also already thinking of her next exhibition which she explained will be on an Arabic theme, expressing her love of the kingdom through the strokes of her brush.
With no plans to retire in the near future, she plans to return to her native town of Krasnodar near the Black Sea in Russia or South Africa, her husband's country later on.
Snejana already has the travel bug and once she has completed her A Levels, the young artist is planning to take an art degree course at University of Edinburgh's School of Art.
The exhibition at the Casa dell'Arte gallery is displaying a range of paintings in two sections each dedicated to veteran and amateur artists.
