By JUXHINA MALAJ
TIRANA, Jan. 8 – Dashamir Vaqarri’s painting titled Reflecting on Venice, has been selected by the Mayor of Calderdale, Councillor Lisa Lambert, as the best painting at the 2015 annual exhibition which officially opened on November 28, 2015 at the Bankfield Museum. 
According to the official website of Halifax Art Society (HAS), many visitors were amazed by the high standard of the 2015 Annual Exhibition, which will be open until January 16, 2016.
“I have always been fascinated by historical cityscapes, buildings and monuments: standing before a 600 year old building we begin to wonder who has been inside this building, what part it has played in their lives and what links we can draw with them today, can it help us to discover our own roots? We begin to recall memories of our own – pictures that tell stories but also allow us to create fantasies. This idea is the basis of my painting,” Vaqarri said about his Reflecting on Venice painting.
“In my art, I use colour and composition to add symbolic meaning and include the unreal, the unconcscious or the imagined as in a dream. The painting shows a reflection in water of some of the most important symbols of Venice – Saint Mark’s Campanile, Saint Mark’s Basicila, and the water itself. These world famous symbols are blurred in their reflection, just as we do not remember them clearly in our mind’s eye, or as in a dream. The strong perspective 
symbolizes time with the Campanile in the foreground and the Basilica is minimalised in the background,” Vaqarri added.
So far he has been a part of numerous art competitions in the UK. Besides winning the first prize at the Halifax Annual Exhibition, he has also won the first prize at the Calderdale Open 2015 with his painting titled Through the Window, a prize presented by the Member of Parliament for Calderdale, Holly Lynch.
After finishing his Fine Arts studies at the University for the Arts in Tirana, Dashamir Vaqarri moved to Germany to study History of Arts. While completing his degree at the University of Regensburg in Bavaria, Vaqarri held two solo exhibitions and was actively involved at various exhibitions in Regensburg, where he later became a Fine Arts lecturer. Vaqarri is currently living in the UK, where he is undertaking a PhD degree in Fine Arts at the University of Derby.
