And so it goes...

ESER AFACAN
Biography

Eser Afacan is a native of Turkey now working as a painter in Canada. He moved to Canada in 2003 from Oslo, Norway, where he lived and worked for 25 years.

Eser Afacan was born in Turkey on August 8, YEAR?. His father was an artist, and Eser started to draw on his own at a young age. He didn't decide to become an artist as a child, though- quite the opposite, actually. It took a long time before he decided that was what he wanted to be.

He studied in Manchester before he came to Norway in 1978 to study math and physics at the University of Bergen. And it was there he met the well-known Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum for the first time. He saw one of his paintings, and became so fascinated that he decided to meet him. He managed to do that, and introduced himself as the best artist in Turkey. Nerdrum wanted to see for himself, and Afacan painted a picture to show him. He liked it, and saw his talent, and in 1984 he made him his student, and encouraged him to make art a way of life.

For many years, Afacan was very poor, struggling to make ends meet while trying to live his life as an artist. Often he couldn't even afford food. But in 1986 that started to change. He had his first exhibition, and 16 of 22 pictures were sold, meaning that the poor times were over. Since then it has only gone one way for him: up.

He has exhibited pictures in many countries, mostly of oil paintings, drawings and lithographies, and has received good reviews. He ended up in first place in a competition held by the magazine Manhattan Arts in New York with the picture "Sisters of the Wind". Also in countries like the UK and France, he has also been noticed. Many people tend to become fascinated by his artwork.

Afacan works hard, and spends a lot of time alone, painting. But in return he sells well, and people are lined up to buy his art. Some exhibitions have even been sold out before they even opened. His success is most likely to continue, and more and more open their eyes for his art.

More....

Little Girl

Interesting

Afacan displays an unfailing empathy for his characters in their exile from an incomprehensible existence.Afacan's style is a seamless melange of classical genres of painting, and examines close-up what painters like Pieter Bruegel showed us from afar. In several of Afacan's paintings, people cling to one another, gazing upward-outside of the canvas into a space shared equally with the viewer. However, in works like "Woman and Shadow," the beauty of the human body is suspended and celebrated before the viewer at the exact moment when physical and spiritual harmony become indistinguishable. While Afacan's paintings might seem like bleak interpretations of human life, rather they are rare and beautifully poised glimpses of an inner loneliness within a painfully secular universe. In Eser Afacan's paintings, humans drift between light and shadows in a world where we are each other's only hope-irremediably dependent on one another.Afacan's work casts a net over universal human feelings and presents them with tender and uncompromising humanity.