Philosophy

Painting is for me to break away from the conventional ideas of my Self. It is a way to enter the wider world. I do not have to worry about what to draw or how to draw. Starting a work with what I love, the way shows itself to me, and I just have to follow it.
 The act of painting means going on a long journey into myself. The power that make me start and proceed with the picture comes from the belief in the space of painting. It is a space like a forest where you can see the road, only when you go into it. I try to free myself from cerebral ideas or plans that might ignore natural flows of the space. I oppose to a rigid planning against the creative process that pushes the natural path away in attempt to create an artificial garden. While painting, I work as a mediator, who constantly comes and goes between tangible and intangible worlds, and finally stops when the unity between the two settles. As an artist, I am assigned to bring the fragments of daily life and the inner center in me together in an organic flow, so that these two worlds act as a tense force that supports each other. And I believe that a fragmented human life can be restored to the harmonious whole only by building up an organic relationship to nature.

 When I start working, the images that have been hidden inside me stretch and appear one by one onto the two- dimensional space of painting. Just as a blind man searches for directions in an invisible world by fumbling around things, the invisible forms wander around me in the beginning. I can't see them, so I grope them with lines and colors without any visual calculations. Relying on my instincts and inspirations I follow the ways that are revealed in front of me. At the end I want to touch the archetypal form breathing deeper under the surface of visible forms, and to hear its heartbeat. I dig into the painting space in search of the hidden form of Life, like a seeker-after-truth who wanders in search of hidden higher truth, or like a kid chasing a butterfly, having glimpsed the patterns and colors on its wings. The kid is driven to this quest, as if he was caught in a net woven on the wings of the butterfly. However, it is hard to see these beautiful patterns again because the butterfly constantly moves. Still, it runs after it. Is it chasing a butterfly to catch it? When a butterfly is caught, it means the death to the butterfly: its fragile wings would be torn and crushed. The kid just playfully chases the butterfly without any purpose to grab it! It continues its act, taking comfort with momentary glimpses of patterns and colors of the butterfly. And the secret sound of air made by movements of the butterfly makes it continue to run.

Themes 

Until now, I have been working on the theme of life. In particular, ‘‘the source of life‘‘ will be most appropriate to express my works in words. The themes of eternal femininity, four seasons, or love that have been worked on so far by me can be understood within the large framework of this theme „life“. The following themes which I am recently occupied with in my paintings can also be looked at in this context. 

     Hope
Many surrounding situations these days lead us to negative sketches of the future. What is most needed in this era is hope. Now we want to see a small flower blooming in the middle of winter, that is, hope. The more desperate the time is, the more art is needed, as can be learned from the teachings of Korean „Han“, the sentiment of sorrow and its sublimation.

     Structural expression of the inner world
The two dimensional space of painting can be contemplated to be something between the discursive world and non-discursive world. It represents a non-material world in visual forms or a material world with invisible soul. These days, I have a desire to build this space with solid structures like the examples of Gaudi‘s architecture, so that the inner qualities of painting space can reflect our external reality. All the details of Gaudi‘s architectures derive from emotional and aesthetic needs in addition to structural functions. In my work, every line must be an expression of structure and emotion. Differences in texture and lines given by particular materials and techniques should also be in tune with the emotions of motifs in the picture. In such a way it is aimed that the structure of the inner world attains physical substances.

  And little small fragile things around us…