Onay Akbaş confronts demons and angels

Every artist and artwork has its own adventure and story, Akbaş says in an interview with Today’s Zaman. “In this adventure, your own existence and studies accompany you. My paintings also have their own stories, of course. The ground of art consists of challenge, but despite rejecting the art that came before, contemporary art is nevertheless constructed on it. Thus, it is not a result of tradition. My calling myself ‘the spoiled kid of the history of art’ is also related to this. It is an important thing if a student who received a classical education in the academy challenges this education and finds his own authentic artistic language. This was also my story,” he explains.

Akbaş was born in Turkey’s Black Sea region and graduated from the department of painting of Marmara University in İstanbul. The 45-year-old artist eventually moved to Paris and still continues his work there. “In the beginning, it was all because of curiosity and in order to go on an adventure,” he says about his move to Paris. “Our generation and the previous generations were washed in French culture and art and Paris was an inevitable direction of our 150 years of modernization. Of course I was affected by all these and I was 24 years old at the time. I believe that I am now living in a city that helps its residents in their existential challenges, having all the possible cultural facilities, such as museums, galleries, libraries and collectors; a place that is totally integrated with the century and a cultural and economical center. I believe all these things keep an artist more alive and lead him to question himself and the things around him,” he emphasizes.

Akbaş notes that his work has gone through various periods, starting with a baroque period and then passing into an impressionist period marked by a strong relationship with nature. Then he passed on to a new type of representation related to comic art, though it lacked the third dimension and failed to integrate space, which is very important in painting.

Asked about his creative process, Akbaş says he has to have a reason in order to paint. “I am not one of those people who wake up in the morning and say, ‘I have to paint today and feel better.’ Even if I acknowledge the therapeutic aspect of painting, the tendency of art is an intellectual one, I believe,” he stresses, adding, “It is an act of releasing demons and angels in the deepest parts of your existence.” He continues: “I pick a concept that I think suits the time and start working on that concept inch by inch. From all these studies I produce sketches, designs and compositions, and I do not touch the canvas in this process until I am psychologically, philosophically and technically ready to paint.” Despite this rigorous process, not everything is under his control, the painter confesses. “I do not really know what I am supposed to do. It is a time open to all kinds of surprises.”