Turkish oil painter Dr. Meltem Eryilmaz hoped to show her paintings in Kuwaiti galleries to get new inspirations from the nature of sea and desert in the Gulf country.
"Art is a mean of communication between people of different cultures that enriches the creative side of artists and ignites their passion to new realms," Eryilmaz told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) Wednesday during her first art exhibition in Turkey.
It has taken her two years to finish her current collection that depicts nature; she used soft shades of greens as her main theme on all of her paintings. She pointed out that her next project would focus on horses.
Eryilmaz, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Engineering at Atilim University in Ankara, said took painting as a hobby and her first participation was in the International Art Exhibition in 2012 in Turkey. She added that specialization in computer engineering helped her with her hobby.
"I think science and art naturally overlap: they both study ideas, theories, and hypotheses that can be translated into creative matter," she noted. "Like scientists, artists study materials, people, culture, history, religion and mythology in order to transform this information into something else." Eryilmaz noted that oil painting was first appeared in western Afghanistan between the 5th and 10th centuries when Indian and Chinese created Buddhist paintings. This form of painting it did not gain popularity until the 15th century by the Dutch artist Jan van Eyck.
Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Monet, Cezanne, El Greco, Loutrec, Renoir, Botero, Turner, Michelangelo, Raphael, Goya, Waterhouse, Velazquez, Homer and Sargent are the most famous painteres in the world, she added.
Eryilmaz said Turkish painting in the western sense only began in the 19th century. It was founded by the artist Osman Hamdi Bey who established the Academy of Fine Arts which is known today as Mimar Sinan University, adding that Turkish painters were sent to France and Italy to polish up their skills.