“I generally start with a certain feeling and try to depict that feeling.”
COVER STORY: FINE ARTS ISSUE
A member of a highly artistic family, Orhan Taylan is a painter and sculptor. He is a graduate of the Fine Arts Academy of Rome and is based in Istanbul.
Orhan Taylan RC 60
What inspires you and what are the main themes of your work?
It is not what you are inspired by, nor the themes, that count in art. It is the artistic language you are using. Whatever you do, it is how you do it. I developed, in time of course, a form of painting parallel to the poetry and the folk songs of my country. I generally start with a certain feeling and try to depict that feeling, and the theme can be anything to give form to that feeling. My work is that of a modern metropolitan artist and has little to do with the peasantry of Anatolia.
Your mother, Seniye Fenmen ACG 39, taught at ACG from 1961 to 1968. Can you tell us a bit about this legendary teacher?
My mother was an aristocrat, descendant of the renown Mithat Pasha, the Ottoman prime minister. She was an intellectual. Among her close friends were prominent poets and novelists of the time. She spoke French, German and English. She was an esteemed painter, a ceramic artist and a pianist too. She would accompany her singer friends on the piano, in concerts. Quite a number of women artists have told me that they had my mother as their art teacher at ACG, and they had been very much influenced by her.
Adsız, 2020
Published February 2021
