Willemijn Bouman
visual artist
designer




'Erciyes 2000' (on a rainy day)
six pannels, acrylic on canvas, 2 – 6 m


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'Erciyes 2000' is the title of an art work made in that particular year.
For several years now, I work on a series of painted 'more-panels' with the general title Erciyes: the name of a volcano on the Anatolian Highland in Central Turkey. This huge volcano inspired me in the making of this series of paintings. 'Erciyes 1999' is finished, and a series of small 'Erciyes' is now in development in my studio in Cappadocia.
Since 1990 I annually stayed a few months in the volcanically shaped environment of Cappadocia in Central Turkey to work on my art works and now I live there permanently. Cappadocia is a surrealistic landscape, formed decennia ago by the surrounding volcanoes, and one of them is the Erciyes. Under the 'smoke' of this volcano I work in my studio: an antique cave-room in the small village of Ibrahimpasa.
Both the landscape as the volcano inspire me for different reasons:
 · the landscape for the sculptural aspect,
 · the volcano as a metaphor for strength: through the years, it became an important element in my personal language of symbols.

The year-by-year evolvement of this theme in my paintings, practiced in both my studios in The Netherlands and Turkey, is realized in form-studies by repeated visual investigation.
This way, the perceptions and experiences generated during my stay in Turkey, are frequently being fixed and thereby provoke a development in my handwriting, my way form-making and the world of images. All is inspired on the Turkish culture and this specific environment. Although I make use of the landscape­image in the series of paintings, this aspect is only a useful matrix within my form­studies, through which the changes in the terms of creation (and by this the image) can come into being. After years we will see what the total of results is...
The creation of a new world by painting, is the final result of the ­ put into work ­ alienation of the perceptual reality, evoked by this bizarre environment.