Born in Ankara, Turkey, 1963.

Graduated from Ege University and in 1986 sold her successful public relations business and moved to London where she has lived since.

In London she set up business and studied Fine Art part-time from 1986 to 2004 where she took various courses amongst others at Chelsea Art School. She is inspired by spiritualism and communication, her work varies from realistic to stylized abstraction and an expression of space.

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Berrin Yavuzer – Artist Statement

I am working with the uncontrolled expression and combination of internal imagery, abstractions freighted with feeling. I tend to paint medium to large canvases in primary acrylics.

It is a real challenge for me to use words about my work. Cultural influences of the eastern Mediterranean, clash of east and west, symbolic glyphs, tales of the Aegean diaspora, images of ancient myth, and Muslim constraint recur in my work – on the surface and just beneath it.

My feeling varies in reflection of inner struggles, typified by forceful expressions of color. There is the constant battle to bridge external reality and the unconscious. Sometimes there is an internal leap beyond the threshold to dream and fantasy, an unexplainable odyssey into childhood fear and fulfillment.

The woman at the canvas – child, daughter, woman, wife, mother, human, artist – reaches into darkness and finds colorful nightmare visions in her. The woman in me – extravert, unusual, pessimist, with a black and white window on life – needs to fight to bring to light these visions as the past and the darkness reach out for me. Yet my conscious aesthetic remains excitement and sensitivity.

I was born and raised in Turkey. I received my BA degree in film and television production from Marmara University in Istanbul where I worked as a film editor and painter for many years. I came to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2001. My goal is to become more widely known in the American art world.

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Who is Gönül Akin ?

Gönül Akin is one of Turkey’s best known musician-painters, a professional singer who voluntarily retired from Ankara Radio, and Turkish Radio and Television ( TRT) years ago in order to devote all her energies to her beloved art.

She had been a musician for forty and a professional painter for the last forty three years.

She started to paint during the same childhood years when she first started to sing. Akin received early encouragement from the Turkish Minister of National Education of the time, Hasan Ali Yücel.

As a result of such support, she had her first painting exhibition while she was still a child and received her first award.

1962 marks the year when Akin began to attend the most well-known studios in Ankara in order to develop her art in new directions.

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Fatma Gulnar is a member of United Painters and Sculptors Association and the Turkish Cultural Ministry Artists Association. She is a professor of Art at Ankara University School of the Arts.

Fatma Gulnar was born in Narlidere, Izmir, in 1957.

Fatma studied painting with Professors Engin Inan and Mustafa Pilevneli while attending the Marmara University Fine Arts Faculty Painting Program, receiving a Bachelor’s degree in 1982. She also studied ceramics with Tuzun Kizilcan. That same year she began exhibiting her work in both solo and group shows. Her exhibits from 1982 to 1985 include:

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