Between Light and Water
Artist Name
Yüksel Cemil Şatıroğlu
Artist Statement
My paintings explore the relationship between light, water, colour and atmosphere. I am particularly fascinated by reflections on water and by the way light and colour continuously transform a scene. I enjoy playing with colour and interpreting landscapes that appeal to me through my own visual language rather than simply reproducing what I see.
While painting these places, I often imagine myself being there—or recall the feeling of places I have once visited. This sense of presence makes the act of painting deeply enjoyable for me; in a way, I experience the landscape again as I paint it.
Working primarily in oil, I have increasingly been drawn to palette-knife work and impasto, using texture, layered colour and generous applications of paint as expressive elements. My background in engineering has shaped my sensitivity to structure, proportion and spatial relationships, while painting gives me the freedom to move beyond precision and respond intuitively.
Ultimately, I seek to create paintings that invite the viewer to pause and experience a familiar landscape differently, through light, colour, texture and reflection.
Exhibition Statement
In Between Light and Water, I explore the expressive possibilities of water and sky through reflections, boats, changing light and colour. Water is not simply part of the landscape; its reflections, movement and constant dialogue with the sky become a source of excitement and inspiration.
Harbours, boats, coastlines and quiet waters provide the starting points for these works. Rather than depicting these landscapes literally, I interpret them through my own visual language, allowing colour, texture and atmosphere to convey the feelings they awaken in me.
Across the exhibition, stillness and movement coexist. A misty morning, a resting boat, the warmth of a sunset or colours reflected across the water can each transform an ordinary moment into something memorable. Through increasingly expressive palette-knife work and impasto, I also allow the physical texture of paint to become part of that experience.
Between Light and Water is ultimately an invitation to pause and discover how water, sky, light and colour can turn a landscape into something not only seen, but also felt.
