FG: First Person Istanbul Interview Winter l992

Fig Trees, Burgaz

Q: How has living in Turkey influenced your painting? A: Oh, my goodness. It's been wonderful, so visually over-stimulating--all these colors and textures and patterns and line and shapes, influencing my work: fresh fruit and vegetables; carpets and kilims; copper and iron work; pottery and glass. On street corners the Gypsies squat, smoking and laughing behind their flourishing spectrum of flowers. Across the street vendors with corn or nuts or artichokes or cucumbers, cry out in tenor voices. In my neighborhood, from my studio, I hear the cries of more vendors--selling tomatoes, looking for "old things," hawking lottery tickets: melodic Ay Gas horns, the children playing, the cats and dogs fighting. All these things come to the surface of my paintings. Q: What do you like most about Turkey? A: First, I love the passion, the emotion, the humor with which the people express themselves. Then, there is a kind of security I feel, knowing that I can never--ever--get lost here; dolmus' and minibus' go everywhere , and if they don't, someone I ask knows how to get me there! And, of course, there is the food. As a vegetarian I am in heaven! Beyond these, there is the fact that this country is everything I ever studied in art history and in ancient history. What I mean is, here are the roots of western civilization: my academic dream come true. And now, you may laugh at me: Often, in the early foggy mornings, while I wait on my street corner for the school service bus, I hear a distant, hollow clopping. It is the echoing rhythm of a poor old horse, hauling a Gypsy cart down Ethem Effendi. Within minutes I behold two delightful Gypsy women, hunched over their spread knees--so casual!--cigarettes dangling from their lips. And, always, they are wrapped in the liveliest of colors and prints. What I love most about these women is the way they wrap their heads in such bold statements of color and pattern. And as they pass there are the painted patterned side-boards--so spirited and gay. Often these carts are piled outrageously with toppling layers of collected cardboard. And hanging from the rear of the cart are gigantic plastic bags, stuffed to the brims with various plastics. So by the time the service bus arrives at 7:l5 I already have a painting going on in my head! Q: How can you teach English and paint at the same time? A: When you think about it, the question is, how can I not teach English and paint! For as long as I can remember my sketchbooks and my journals and my readings have been inseparable: to write, to draw, to read--all at once--is as normal, as ordinary, as instinctive--as necessary--as breathing. Moreover, I love children. I love the idea of education and arousing in students a curiosity, an interest, a thirst--to want more and more. Enlightenment is great! Myself, I don't get much sleep. Yet I don't believe I short-change either discipline. When I am with my students I give l50 per cent. And when I leave, I am on my way to either a painting or a reading or a piece of writing still rolled in the typewriter carriage. I could never just paint. I have a frontal lobe that requires lots of feeding and I have a mother instinct that needs children; for my own two have grown up and away. Q: Where is your studio? A: My studio is in the large, lighted salon of my Erenkoy flat. It is a huge, happy place/space, one in which I can stand back and contemplate the picture surfaces. Why Erenkoy? It's a perfect spot --not too far from school, yet very much in the city. I need the stimulation. I need to know that I am in the midst of a civilization while I am painting it (or about it). And when I need to go and take a walk--to walk off what is in my brain--I easily find "my sahil," the walkway along the Deniz from Erenkoy to Fenerbahce. Inevitably I see familiar faces; there are hellos and howareyous and warm exchanges. This is what I love here: the sense that this is my neighborhood, that I belong here, that this is my little place on the planet.