It was 8th March, 2023. I had just stepped out of Varuna Gezgin, the restaurant-cafe in Taksim, and begun to feel an effervescence– a happiness at the success of this trip I had scheduled and taken, for and by myself. The trip from India to Turkey, to celebrate my 30th birthday on and near the wind and waters of the Bosphorus. In the cold gray afternoon, I stood for a minute outside the restaurant, wondering what next? That’s when he caught my eye. Through the closed wood and glass door of the shop right by the cafe I had departed, I could see an old man working in warm, tungsten light. Forgetting my manners, I put my face against the glass of the door for a better view. It was a charming scene, entirely contrasting the cold open outside. An old man sat in a dark blue sweater, carving away in concentration, surrounded by objects and paintings.
My curiosity must have been loud enough for him to feel my presence at the glass. He looked up and seeing me, motioned that I step in. Hesitating only for a second (my first thought was I didn’t want to communicate with anyone at that moment with my rudimentary Turkish and Google Translate), I pushed the door open and went in.
The shop, if that’s what it was, was clearly his studio. He did not seem interested in displaying his works in a particular manner. It was truly more of an artist’s studio than an art gallery though paintings were hanging and waiting in all parts of the room. I don’t remember what I asked him first (the passing of a year has dulled my memory to our conversation) but I remember understanding quickly that it was as I had feared– my friend knew almost no English. I do remember he asked me why I’m in Turkey and I told him the word for traveler. He asked me where I’m from and when I said India, well… again, my memory fails me. Anyway, he walked with me around his small room as I took in the sheer number of his works. And eyes of women followed me around the room. Most of his paintings were of women and birds. I couldn’t say which one took precedence. I tried asking if the women had come to him in waking life or were they from his dreams and mind but our language barrier held us back. Even though there was great beauty and simplicity in most of his paintings, it was hard to truly enjoy them seeing as they were surrounded by everything else. One could sense their beauty and potential but also how singular and awesome they would be if allowed breathing space to stand on their own. I suppose it happens with every artist that as their creations grow, they have to be delegated corners in the studio when not taken in by others.
Among the birds and women and a handful of men that he had painted on wooden blocks and slabs, there was one painting that caught my eye: a self-portrait. The artist as a bird, sitting on a branch, a small cove of deep green opening up behind him as if signaling shelter and refuge.
I moved on from that to the birds. They truly were his best works. It seemed like he understood them. Even painted, even in wood, their lines carried a certain vivacity as if the artist had managed to paint them in a moment right before action, as if they were right there breathing and alive. An intensity was conveyed through the colours chosen for the birds, the diligent strokes that made them, their eyes and the fact that the artist always chose to bring them to life in wood, in an element one step closer to nature than paper.
I found a painting that I felt I had to bring back.
Ne kader, I asked him but he didn’t understand me.
I tried signalling that I wanted to buy the painting (if I could afford it) but he didn’t seem to understand. Google Translate was hard for him to hold and read. Luckily, a man came into the shop at that time to talk to him. They clearly knew each other as their glances were familiar and the conversation seemed quick and purposeful. Just as this stranger was about to leave, I took a shot and asked if he knew english. Thankfully, he did and it could be communicated that I wanted to buy the painting. The artist asked me to hand the painting over to him once and as I did, he took out his brush and white paint and signed his name on the wooden tile: Nihat Usta.
I took the tile from him and looked at the little bird. Alpine Accentor, the words were written on a corner below. Somewhere between a robin and a sparrow, I thought. It looked so little and sober, its single eye translating some sadness. The bare wood as its background and the single leaf near its clawed little feet perhaps evoked a sadness in me that I transferred to its eye. A solitary painted one communicating the feeling of how it might be for a bird to sit on the branch of a dying tree in a dying world.
As I was about to leave the shop, I noticed that Nihat was actually working on finishing an instrument. Seemed like there was little he could not carve out of wood. I appreciated his work, thanked him for the painting and came out of Nihat's hide-out of creative expression into the streets of Pera. Buildings, shops, narrow alleys awaited me as a new stretch of exploration. I walked at once sad and satisfied. Thoughts passed of who the artist might be as a person, who the women in the paintings were, if he felt as free or trapped as a bird, but finally rested on his devotion to his work. In the busy streets of Taksim, it takes a special kind of love for one's work to be surrounded by the businesses and tourism and do what you have to, in your own unembellished way.
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