As far as I can remember, since I was little, I was pretty gifted for arts and crafts. Clearly, this gift was coming from my family. I mean, just look at the three paintings on the left page (see pics 1, 2, 3), considering that my parents and my brother got the typical very basic art education like anyone else... I think they are quite talented.
My strongest enthusiasm on painting started at my high school years. I enjoyed painting from nature and master painters (see pic 4). At the same time, I was very interested in social sciences. Actually, I wanted to study Psychology after high school, but my destiny changed when I didn’t pass the university exam. In the last year of high school, my friend Tutku Günkut was going to take the qualification exam for an art school. Although I was planning to wait for a year and try again for Psychology, she talked to me about my painting skills and convinced me to get in to this art school.
Mimar Sinan Fine Art University is considered the best Fine Arts University in Turkey. Tutku and I started to learn how to draw artistically and studied many hours before the exam (see pic 5). We had to take a barrier exam and few more. Of course, there were many competitors. At the end of this entire exam marathon, I was fortunate to be selected for the painting department (see pic 6). Unfortunately, my friend couldn’t make it, but later on she studied in another collage and became a successful painting teacher.
For the first two years, I took classical art education. So, I got better at drawing and painting with colours, backing it up with art history and other theoretical studies. The tricky part came at the third year, when I needed to choose an “Atelier” (the studio where the student builds up her/his own art style). I chose the most modernist one which suited my art style and my personality.
On the collage drawing (see pic 7), that smiley face is me; I was 19 years old and living by myself at the attic of this building in Ortaköy, Istanbul, in the late 80’s. My family was worried in the beginning, as their little bird flew away from the nest at a very early age, but times were different and we had much better friendships back then... Inspiration was at the highest peak; love, music and dance were all around us. It is a great privilege being a Gen X’er, the fantastic MTV generation!