İsmet Tatar, Artist

I was fortunate, indeed, to be invited into the life and art world of İsmet Tatar, Kyrenia, Cyprus. In a brief afternoon, I was profoundly touched by both the woman and her work. The reflections below are only a beginning of what I would like to know, to see, to feel about her ability to move life’s emotions into image.

That day, after an introduction to the numerous “series” she has already exhibited, Ismet explained her current work, which includes making her own paint colors and the paper for her news constructs.

First, the colors. Ismet has created and uses in her work forty-one different paint colors. All come from natural elements in Cyprus: rocks, shells, sand, earth, stone, and bark. She identifies the material, pulverizes bits of it, mixes it into paint, and uses it to bring the land, literally, into her art.

Next, the paper. Huge tubs of wire, with a liquid, white paper-maché-like mixture, bits of color and objects, drying racks, and butcher-paper, model forms cover most of the expanse of her airy studio. In process are additional works in her “paper” series. The largest, finished construction in her studio is a horizontal, three-dimensional collage of colored rolls of handmade paper tied with string, mounted side by side. Attached also by string to the bottom of each roll are pieces of old land deeds and parts of architectural drawings—both proof of property ownership. Even in the stillness of the studio, they seem to move in the wind. The official documents—deeds and drawings rent apart—symbolize the divided Cyprus and the loss of property experienced in 1974. To someone to whom the land is life itself, this ripping away from family homesteads, from ownership and the “land of my family” brings unending anguish and frustration—how can that loss be resolved? Her work inspired my own, in the poem below:

Artist’s Rendering April 4, 2008

Bits of string flutter in the breeze
Attached, torn remnants--titles, deeds
And architect’s dreams--
Move furtively
No rest, no resolution in the art.
Memories, too
Are buffeted by gusts and storms
And homes, once theirs, are lost
Refuge in a new land but not the same
Earth of many colors form the images
Giving shape to claims, dispute, and rights--
Hard copy for the bitter dream gone wrong.


Another painting in Ismet’s villa that moved me was Four Faces. It is a large oil painting, hanging above an antique wooden chest in her home. It is a portrait of four women from her village. It is almost haunting in its intensity, its reflection of these women, real women İsmet has known. Each has her own story—of grief, of despair, of madness, perhaps—but, too, of life as it is and will be—endured.