Magic creatures

The idea for this exhibition came together gradually.

I have been drawing magical animals for many years. At first, they came into my life through my children: lions for my son, and unicorns for my younger daughter. But over time, I realized that these images are much older. They reach back into my own childhood, when I had to grow up much earlier than I should have. They come from a love of fairy tales and imagination, and from that inner world where a little more is possible than in ordinary life.

I wanted this exhibition to be more than just a series of animal images.

Each animal is connected with a particular state of mind, a character quality, and a time of day. The unicorn is connected with dreams, purity, and aspiration. The lion with joy, clarity, strength, and a sense of inner fullness. The elephant with memory, wisdom, and stability. The panther with mystery, intuition, and inner freedom.

For me, this series was also a personal challenge. I wanted to bring four independent works together into one whole and to work on a larger scale than I usually do. I was looking for images that genuinely appealed to me, and I put a great deal of effort into making all four works feel harmonious together despite their different moods and colors, so that they would be perceived as one coherent series.

It was important to me that a child looking at these works would not simply recognize an animal, but would begin to reflect.

• What mood is this animal in?

• Is it calm or excited?

• Is it dreaming, remembering, rejoicing, or searching for something?

• What is it like inside?

• What is my mood today?

I wanted these paintings to become a starting point for conversation between children and adults.

There is no need to give a child a ready-made answer. It is much more interesting to ask what they themselves see and feel. Sometimes children notice something in an image that the artist never intended at all, and for me that is one of the special values of art — the possibility of seeing something of your own.

Another theme in this series is time of day and color.

Each animal has its own space and its own light: morning, day, twilight, and night. Through color, it is possible to talk with a child about the mood of a painting, about why morning feels different from night, and about which colors seem calm, joyful, or mysterious.

In these works, I wanted to bring together several things at once: fairy tale, observation of nature, personal memories, animal symbolism, and simple questions about a person’s inner world.

Some details in the paintings are also connected with my own life. For example, the elephant has a very personal connection with Antalya, where I once lived and saw the mountains from my window every day. The lion, too, seems to have come from sunny Turkey, where my children grew up swimming in the sea from infancy. That is why the theme of memory is not abstract for me, but deeply personal.

The second part of the exhibition is “Leopards.”

This work is made in batik on silk, a technique I first discovered around twenty years ago while studying at university and which, over time, became the main medium of my artistic practice.

Displayed alongside the batik are watercolor sketches of leopards created in 2023. They became the starting point for the larger work on silk.

But while creating the batik, the image unexpectedly took on a new meaning for me. As I intuitively built the jungle around the leopard, I suddenly realized that I was creating a symbol of strength and courage for myself.

A symbol of the ability to keep moving forward even when you are afraid. To take the next step even when you do not yet know what lies ahead.

Perhaps that is why these jungles also became, for me, an image of emigration — a space you have to make your way through, searching for a path, adapting, sometimes getting lost, but still continuing to move forward.

And so the leopard became more than just an image of a powerful animal. It became a kind of inner source of courage for me — a reminder that it is possible to take the next step even when the whole path is not yet visible.

I hope that children will see in these animals not only magical characters, but also different ways of being strong, dreamy, calm, brave, or free.

And perhaps adults will remember that they, too, once needed fairy tales.

And that sometimes it is important to ask yourself again: What am I dreaming of now? And do I have the courage to take the next step?