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Duriye Yuksel has Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Painting. Her work shows a variety and plurality in subject |
I was introduced to painting when I was seventeen and it took another seventeen years for it to meet up with me again and forever. After having raised my two daughters, I went to college and graduated with highest honors in Bachelors in Arts after which I completed my Master’s degree. Then I continued painting professionally. I paint to this day. I have also been teaching art at the Samsun Anatolian Fine Arts High School.
If you look at my work so far, you will see that there have been different influences, hence different types of works at different times. A variety and plurality are seen in terms of technique as well as in subject.
This is because with my work I attempt to always claim and explain a new thesis. There are different reasons for this. As with almost every other artist I too have always been in a continuous search seeking new things that may inspire. When I go through different stages of life, reflections to these stages find themselves in my work. This variety that is formed is solely a function of my place in time and it maintains its own fictional and hence visual continuity.
If I were to categorize my paintings they would fall into two primary categories.
The first of these categories being the representation of figures, both human and object. These studies were initially more realistic and then progressively turned toward being more abstract and de-formative. One period is strictly composed of contrast color studies and my master’s thesis was the theoretical support of this study. This thesis entails abstract compositions that focus on colors, especially contrasting colors.
The second category involves the representation of clothes. There are many ends to “clothing”; from serving a basic functional parameter in human life, to their ability to play the role of a vessel for escape as costume, the immediate transformation of the wearer and even as markers of society as something emblematic. These studies culminated in an exhibition of this work in ’95.
In addition there are many still life studies both related to and independent of the above mentioned categories.
In terms of my method, my preferred media are oil or ink on canvas, however, I find an equal comfort with watercolor which I owe to my brief time at New York’s Pratt Institute. I continue to use both oil and water color equally to this day.
My two entries into this exhibition concern the expression of a complacent melancholy that is spawned by the mechanization of modern life, the loss of a sense of essence and that state of descent that is captured in the assembly of many stoic men.
In conclusion this collection of work is more a map of personal reflections. A series dedicated to the process of acquiring skill and then the exploration of intrigues with these cultivated means.
