EXPLORATIONS ON THE PATH OF ART

Art is a free and infinite journey made while realizing and discovering an idea, an emotion or a feeling.

ART IS THE PATH, AND THE ARTIST IS AN EXPLORER.

As an explorer on the path of art, I am happy to share the message of the Pale Blue Dot through my works.

FREEDOM, LIMITLESSNESS, ELEGANCE AND AWARENESS...

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ABOUT ME.

As an explorer on the path of art, I am happy to share the message of the Pale Blue Dot through my works.

The fact that I spent my childhood in a cosmopolitan place like Stockholm developed my awareness by perceiving differences in personality, taste and color disguised in details while enjoying contrasts and contradictions. I believe that my perception of Awareness as well as Freedom, Infinity and Aesthetics have shaped me over the years.

I went on long motorcycle trips, probably because it enabled me to combine freedom and infinity with awareness, and thanks to this, I tasted the bread of distant lands, explored its streets and toured its countryside. Art is as free as a motorcycle ride. The boundaries of art are determined by the artist. Just as the rider determines the range of his motorcycle.

Art is a free and infinite journey made while realizing and discovering an idea, an emotion or a feeling.  Art is the path, and an artist is an explorer.  I am excited to be a traveler on a journey which originates from an awareness of a sky that can contain any and all colors of my imagination.

AN EXPLORER ON THE PATH OF ART

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• Son, why do you always paint a blue sky? You know, skies can be purple, pink, yellow… any and all colors of your imagination!

• ???... !

Freedom of mind
Nurettin Akyay, was sent to Paris with government means for his university education in order to contribute to the educational ambitions of the young Turkish Republic and raise a bright new generation. Upon his return, he was appointed as the principal of the first high school in the remote town of Elazığ from which he continued to Ayvalık and to İnegöl.

Many years later, he had found an opportunity to broaden the horizons of his 7-year-old grandson, Kaan. I suppose the foremost contribution of teachers is to liberate the character, mind and vision of their students.

The path of art
I shared this dialogue with my late grandfather, because it is my first memory of being shaped in the path of art. It was obvious that kneading the innate sense of freedom that pervaded my soul with the idea of infinity would guide me as I progressed to new horizons in my life.

Grace and aesthetics
I have always been fascinated by aesthetics, elegance and beauty in various forms.

I find the harmony and graciousness of the wild nature especially alluring. 

Are flowers so gorgeous because honey bees have an aesthetic awareness? Could someone please explain the impeccable color combination of some birds? Just imagine the harmony of the contrast in the colors of a Mandarin Duck.

Awareness
I grew up in the cosmopolitan city of Stockholm and had the opportunity to perceive nuances of people and cultures. You become aware of the differences in certain details, personalities and colors which you learn to appreciate. Contrasts and contradictions become more interesting. Even delightful and preferable.

What is this awareness?
A realisation, a perception. To live the moment and being aware of what you feel.  For example, noticing and taking pleasure of experiencing a different type of bread placed in front of you while waiting for your meal at the restaurant. Recognizing and appreciating that when you talk to someone, they actually take a few moments of their life for you. 

To live fully and enhanced, but not necessarily by doing more.  

I can say that the sense of Awareness as well as Freedom, Infinity and appreciation of Aesthetics has formed me and enriched my interaction with art.

The Path of Art
Like many students, my notebooks were filled with graphs, and even today my notebooks are overflowing with my thoughts and sketches. After college, I first became interested in photography. I wanted to catch and shoot personalities, but instead of a stereotypical character, I wanted to capture what was not obvious, the contrast, sometimes even what was tried to be hidden, and preserve it forever with the photograph.

A photograph can have an extraordinarily powerful effect. 

One photograph in a motorcycle ad reminded me of a dream I often had in my childhood so I was immediately prompted to begin long motorcycle journeys.  Since then, I have explored many different countries around the world alone by motorcycle - perhaps because I could combine the feelings of freedom, infinity and awareness. I’ve traveled to more than sixty countries so far, and most of them I’ve traveled by motorcycle. I smelled its grass, visited its museum, tasted its bread in its restaurant, walked its back streets and saw its countryside. I think the path of art is as free as a motorcycle ride. The limit is within the artist himself. Just as the rider determines the range of his motorcycle journey.

Yes, art should be free. It should contain awareness. If art also expresses an idea, emotion or a thought, then art will also have a soul. But art must also be aesthetic. Elegance and aesthetics separate art from an act or discourse.

As an explorer artist, I’m inspired by the freedom in artistic expression. I get highly motivated observing an unrestricted mindset and an artist’s sense of ease.  I think that art is an unregulated and unlimited journey made while realizing and discovering an idea, emotion or feeling. Art is the path, and the artist is an explorer. I am excited to be the explorer of my artistic path that started with the awareness of a sky that can contain any and all colors of my imagination...

Sincerely,
Kaan Yıldırım

GALLERY

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Momentary Master 05/22

120 x 180 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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Share & Cherish 05/22

120 x 180 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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Momentary Master 05/22

180 x 120 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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Share equally with Love 02/22

140 x 210 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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Share with Love 02/22

140 x 210 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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Momentary Master 02/22

180 x 360 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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Momentary Master 02/22

35 x 50 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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All we need is Love 01/22

140 x 210 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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All we need is Love 11/21

64 x 90 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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Share & Cherish 11/21

64 x 90 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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Momentary Master 10/21

60 x 140 cm Acrylic paint on primed MDF panel
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Share equally with Love 10/21

64 x 90 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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Momentary Master 10/21

60 x 140 cm Astarlı MDF panel üzerine akrilik boya
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Why Red? 10/21

70 x 100 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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Us 09/21

40 x 50 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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My Love 02/21

40 x 30 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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Momentary Master 04/20

40 x 30 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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Momentary Master 10/19

40 x 40 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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Momentary Master 05/19

46 x 55 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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We Are Free 10/17

64 x 90 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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All we need is Love 05/17

64 x 90 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
Kaan Yıldırım

Free 05/17

30 x 40 cm Acrylic paint on canvas
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Love 10/17

40 x 30 cm Acrylic paint on canvas

CARL SAGAN - The Pale Blue Dot

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Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

CARL SAGAN



Carl Sagan’s comments written 25 years ago still presents a stunning perspective on ourselves.

A sustainable Earth for us all.

I believe that all current problems of the earth have derived from humanity’s vicious cycle and they can only be solved by achieving a single world state belonging to all humans and creations of Earth.

You too can believe it while humming John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ song.

A sustainable Earth

ust being an environmentalist will not be sufficient to transform us to a sustainable world. Sustainability can only be achieved by combining a humane with an environmentalist approach. Because you cannot protect the environment and ecology when people are at war with each other geographically, racially and politically. We cannot protect trees, water, biodiversity while bombs fall and schemes are set for destruction.

The idea of a single world state; We have only one world. Everyone’s world. So why not having one State? Everyone’s state. Is it possible?

Think of the USA. It consists of 50 autonomous states. Germany consists of 16 autonomous states. The EU consists of 27 independent countries. These are just three examples that work well. So why not have a single world state consisting of 150 united states? A United States of the World.

If you’re not convinced, please turn up the music!

Sharing the world’s resources fairly will solve all our problems.

All wars in history and all future wars are about not sharing the world and its resources. We fight, destroy each other and the environment because some in the world covets the rights of others. We say only mine, not yours. My oil, my water, my medicine, my resources. However, California also benefits from Texas’ oil. Nebraska also benefits from California’s technology revenues. Germany’s taxes are turning into investments in Portugal. Why not invest in Sudan? Migration ends, war ends, hunger ends, pandemics end.

Local democracies have lost their function.

There are currently functioning democracies in the world, but democracies foresee a fair distribution of existing rights and resources within their own communities. The democracies in question are not concerned with protecting the rights of neighboring societies or of all humanity. Moreover, democracies takes up arms and fights in case others covet the resources they consider their own. For this reason, ‘local democracies’ which provide fair distribution within their own society are insufficient as a sustainable solution for the entire Earth because they treat the society at another end of the world unfairly. Migration exists in a world where there is unequal sharing. Those who lack resources go to the source. Throughout history, major migrations have been due to unshared resources.

Now is the time do something different!

Environmentalism and Climate change:

If there would be a single world government, we could protect the world against climate change. Our neighbor’s environmental policies affect us. Where there is no global environmentalism, the local environment suffers. China’s coal affects Sweden’s climate. Why is China burning coal? Because China believes that they can protect their existence and prosper only by producing more, out of competition anxiety.

Democracy, prosperity and justice:

There is no democracy if the rights of every person in the world are equal. Democracy, like environmentalism, can only be a solution to the world if it is applied globally. Where there is no global democracy, there will be migration, and it will challenge local democracies. Human migration caused by Mexico’s economic and political problems is endangering America’s democracy. The dictatorship in Syria threatens and wears out Turkey’s democracy. The poverty of Libya, Somalia and Afghanistan affects Sweden’s prosperity and tranquility. The overwhelming majority of the negative news that appear on TV are a product of unequal sharing of resources of the world.

Re-read and memorize Carl Sagan’s last paragraph!

So how can we fairly distribute all the earth’s resources among all the earth’s people?

There are currently successful examples: USA, EU and Germany. What the USA has accomplished for 50 states can also be achieved by a single united world state consisting of 150 states. The subject should be looked at with a 30-50-year perspective, because the idea needs to settle in people’s minds and develop.

Sound utopian and marginal?

Remember that 30-40 years ago the Green Party was once considered a marginal ‘tree-hugging’ party, but today, even though it doesn’t have a green label in its name, a political party without policies on sustainability and environmentalism is unlikely to succeed.

I fully believe that young people who see that true sustainability can only be achieved by combining humane sharing together with environmentalism may eventually be able to realize the dream of uniting the world under one single world state!

It’s time to protect our pale blue dot and share it with justice and love.

I am happy to share the message of the Pale Blue Dot through my works.

Sincerely

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