Melisa King
LandE scape
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW art of painting and Japanese ink painting. So there may be traces of these two painting forms in my works. For example, I may be inspired from transferring intense emotions like 20th century European painting and admiring, contemplating nature like Japanese ink painting. For the purpose of broadening my perspective on European painting and Renaissance, I studied and lived in Florence. I was so captivated by walking on the same streets where heroes of Renaissance such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo walked once. I believe it is a chance to live and work on painting in Florence. Apart from that, I find Italy very crucial in the history of art. I have a personal interest in Italy and Italian language, in which gives me the urge to live there in the future. After my Florence experience, I came back to Istanbul and applied to Sabanci University Master’ s degree in Visual Arts and Communication Design and accepted with scholarship. Coming back to Istanbul and entering a college where contemporary art is on the forefront introduced me to see the wide diversity of today’ s art world, even though this diversity pushed me to embrace painting more. Apart from this, I can not consider myself as an artist who is very much influenced by her own cultural substratum, namely Turkish culture. But rather I see myself as an artist who is influenced very much by her“ enviromental” substratum. I am influenced and inspired by my family life, my emotions, nature, landscapes, the sun and so on. In that sense I am more focused on my microcosmic life, rather than a macro one which includes country, history and culture.
Everyday elements are keeping my artwork alive and nurturing my self to produce more.
Over these years you have experimented with a wide variety of different techniques. The figurative language you convey in your pieces is the result of a constant evolution of your searching for new means to express the ideas you explore in your works: your inquiry into the expressive potential of colors combines together figurative as subtle abstract feature into a coherent balance. We we would suggest to our readers to visit http:// www. melisaking. com in order to get a synoptic view of your work: in the meanwhile, would you like to tell to our readers something about the evolution of your style? In particular, would you shed light on your usual process and set up?
I have always felt close to oil painting. The opportunities that oil painting offers are very crucial in my painting process. However I always have the urge to try different materials for the sake of experience. For example in some of my works I use sand in acryclic, different kind of inks such as Iranian calligraphy ink, watercolor pastels, dry pastels and colored pencils. I like to experience coloring capacities of different materials. In that sense I can say that color is and has always been my main stimulator. Color gives life and vitality and I am very excited about this endless spectrum.
I get inspired very easily from the visuals I see everyday if my mind is calm and focused. Whenever I get in touch with a such view, I take a photo of it and / or I let myself grasp the feeling of as much as I can to transfer it on the canvas. So, the image never comes alone, it brings a
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