Tag: contemporary art
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Palimpsest vs Collage
How many years ago now was it that the aesthetic theoretician Richard Woodfield referred to me as a ‘palimpsest’ artist? Close to 20. At the time, I liked the analysis; it gave me something new to think about, since the idea of my work being constructed of layer upon semi-transparent layer rang true. Nowadays, I’d have…
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The Atlantic…
If you remember, “more water drawings” was on my list of “10 ideas”, and I have stuck to my resolution of not having any more ideas until I use up the ones on my list. These two oil pastels are the first I’ve done since getting back from Portugal last month. It was refreshing to be…
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Running with the Cows (or, “Til the Cows Come Home – Georgia Road Trip, Part 10)
So, where was I? Right… we were leaving Aphrodisias, and I was giving Harun the option of camping at a place about 2k from the site, or driving all the way to Pamukkale (which was not really all that far – we could make it in time for dinner). I was betting ’50-50′ (under normal conditions,…
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Centering (Georgia Road Trip, Part 5)
Central Anatolia! One of my favorite places in the world, with fairy chimneys, underground discos, no, wait, forget the disco (been there, done that)… HacıAli likes to tell the story of how one day, driven into a stark-raving frenzy by my disco-neighbors, I smashed all the pots in front of his shop. (About an hour…
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Big, Big Lake (Georgia Road Trip, Part 4)
With ‘democracy’ in Turkey resumed and in full swing, we continued on our way to Georgia, ‘slowly-slowly’, as they say in Turkey. We meandered from the Menderes River waterfall to Lake Eğirdir, passing a wind farm in the middle of nowhere (reminding me that there is a moral component to aesthetics and explaining why objections to wind turbines on…
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Aphrodisias is for Lovers (Georgia Road Trip, Pt. 2)
Aphrodiasas was the first scheduled stop on our epic road trip. It’s not exactly close to Bodrum, and it’s not really on the way to anywhere, but I’d heard it was a great place (“10 best ancient cities in Turkey”), and had a sculpture studio that was famous in its day (5th century? I forget.…
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Prognostication
If you’ve read some of my earlier blog posts, then you may know that I decided to take 52 of these postcard-size collages and turn them into a deck of fortunetelling cards. It seemed the logical thing to do, since the number of people really interested in looking at artwork seemed infinitessimely smaller than the number of people…
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What’s going on?
This is the latest of my ‘water oil pastels’ – water scenes, done in oil pastels. The scenes are imaginary, a combination of photographs I’ve taken to use as ‘sketches’ and imagin-A-tion. In the case of these drawings/paintings, this means that you are not the only one who doesn’t know exactly what’s going on. Neither do I. And,…
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Oleanders
The oleanders by the side of our house/apt have just started to bloom! It’s late, I know, but we don’ get so much sun on us (a Good Thing for an Aegean summer), and our oleanders are probably not looked after as well as they should be. We only have a few – just enough for some color…
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Indolence…
It’s the lazy season around our house these days. Next door there’s banging – lots of loud, house-building banging – which is unfortunate, because it’s just the time of year when my ‘outside studio’ is at its most pleasant. The banging (and the occasional excruciating whine of metal slicing through metal) has been a good excuse for not…
Deborah Semel Demirtaş 