Suddenly

You might ask why this painting looks so radically different from my other work. It was created ‘all of a sudden’ as Orhan Veli, one Turkey’s most revered poets, describes below. There was no plan, no sketches. It was born spontaneously. That intense blue covered the canvas without warning. The faint, barely visible figures you see aren’t deliberate. They emerged naturally from accidental brush marks. They are ‘the crowd’—ordinary people, just like us, standing quietly and watching the universe. Their sudden appearance on the canvas out of random strokes reflects our own sudden existence in this world. Perhaps not quite so suddenly, the Boatman appears in his little yellow boat. Enjoy reading Orhan Veli in translation:

The sky was suddenly there;
The blue all at once.
Everything happened all of a sudden;
Suddenly smoke began to rise from the earth;
The sprout happened all of a sudden, the bud all at once.
The fruit happened all of a sudden.
All of a sudden,
All at once;
Everything happened all of a sudden.
The girl all at once, the boy all at once;
Roads, fields, cats, people...
Love happened all of a sudden,
Joy all at once.

Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cm, Private Collection