Artist in his studio.

Today the Scottish community in Baku celebrate St Andrews day, and a pipe band paraded through the streets of the old city. It was a glorious sunny day and I fully intended to use a photo of the pipers... or perhaps an old city cat... for today's entry. However having followed the parade, a friend and I decided to seek out artist Yusif Mirza whose work I'd seen at a recent art and craft fair. We discovered his studio - a long thin four room flat crammed full of his work, - off one of the central streets of Baku and spent an enjoyable hour and half there while he dug out folders of work for us to leaf through and served us juice, chocolate and pomegranate. His work, ranging from watercolour to pastels to oil paint and ink, is varied - sometimes it's the petroglyphs of Gobustan to the south of Baku, sometimes the buildings of Baku's old city, sometimes Azerbaijani culture - musicians, dancers, people, and over the years he seems to have sucessfully tried all styles. This unfinished oil painting greeted us as we entered - it's part of his Memories work and I love everything about it! Enjoyable though the rest of my day was, visiting Mr Mirza's studio was the most memorable part, so he has to be my blip for today.