The b-uncut blog

b-Loud: Turgay Denizel: Painting Glass

// February 11th, 2010 // b-loud // Lawrence

Turkish painter Turgay Denizel works on canvas and glass. His work ripples with fantasy and texture. Turgay has reached a point where his work is blossoming. He is committed to his art and has his direction. For now at least!

b-uncut: What was your very first artwork? TD: One hundred little squares in different colours. I was impressed by a Paul Klee painting.

b-uncut: Describe the piece you love the most—why? TD: ‘Case of Forest’, seems to be the most coherent among eight abstract oils I painted in a year. It reminds me of a familiar hide away. I like to create surrealistic dreamscapes and have been exploring my psyche to relate scenery to images from eras which never existed and portray non-civilised life forms. With this approach I hope to reveal Terraneaus and her unidentified sentience.

b-uncut: What are your methods? Your inspirations?

TD: I paint glass using a unique method that breaks through the limitations of classic teaching. Some lessons from the ancients are not practical any more so I had to develop a new technique which allows the process to be more creative and increases its potential. I prepare the body of the color as I would oil paints and imagine the glass as the canvas.

Using this process the different depths of glass and color become translucent light catchers and after firing, the work becomes a hologram with variable assets of light. I spend a lot of time to prepare the basic composition and the textures created through the preparation become my visual inspirations. A chaotic laying of color provokes me to re-arrange and plant some meaning within the cacophony. I let it direct me, and trace its leads. Hence my tendency towards automatism. Spatulas and knives are my tools while preparing the paintings structure; mostly for glass. The next phase is shading, contouring with brushes. I’m now gaining the flexibility for both glass and canvas.

b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?

TD: Without any guidance or art education. I wasn’t certain what to do with my unrelenting imagination. Meanwhile demands for glass art appeared and this became a way out from the conventions in my daily life. Painting, staining and decorating windows served me as a talisman for a long period of time and led to my discovery of a unique fusion. My unconscious process through art led me and I adapted my technique in reaction to mistakes made along the way.

b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way?

TD: Watching and admiring the endless art treasures and their creators.

b-uncut: Do you consider your personal and professional life one and the same—do you define your art or does it define you?

TD: My abstract thoughts have moved to a deep part of my consciousness. At first it didn’t seem possible to realise any of them since they could not be useful objects. Now I see how this created a limiting and tiring separation between my personal and professional life. Hypothesising abstraction as the most necessary object of my daily life unified me with my art. It now allows me to define my art and hopefully this will continue.

b-uncut: If you were to design the ultimate dinner party, what 5 artists (dead or alive) would you include for stimulating conversation?

TD: Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini, Georgia O’Keeffe, Camille Claudel, Frida Kahlo. Queens of dreams…!

b-Quick!

b-uncut: Your favorite swear word? TD: When I get mad at somebody I call him a tyrant. Teeny weeny teensy weensy tyrant.

b-uncut: Most attractive/least attractive quality in a significant other? TD: Most attractive is benignity, least is the ‘poor baby syndrome’.

b-uncut: Your biggest (albeit endearing) flaw? TD: I’m so indecisive but have now mastered it to evaluate both sides.

b-uncut: Your parents advice you should have followed, but didn’t? TD: Oh I can be a wooden horse and following any advice is the most difficult thing for me.

b-uncut: The superhero power you wish you had? TD: Teleporting myself to anywhere on the world and the universe.

b-uncut: The celebrity you’d like to meet? TD: I wish he was alive, well maybe we’ll meet in my dreams ; Carlos Castaneda.

b-uncut: Your least favorite question to be asked in any interview? TD: I guess this one.

b-Honest!

b-uncut: Where do you see yourself in…..

One month? Ready for fructuous moonbaths in spring.

One year? Lucid dreaming.

One decade? A prolific art life.