Nurefsan’s Night

Subject: Self Portrait Nurefsan Dogruguven

Media: Acrylic painting on Layered Card
Dimensions: 610 x 420 mm

The subject of this painting is to express my personality, feelings, and my background

by using colors and choosing different techniques.

On the left side of the painting, we can see my portrait. The portrait and painting are
generally done in neon colors. For the background, I took an inspired from Van Gogh's
painting Starry Night and changed the colors to pink, red, and blue to create a sunset
effect and replaced my portrait instead of the tower. To the right of my portrait, there are
some buildings that represent Istanbul and I painted them in black and white.

I was inspired by Van Gogh's Starry Night painting because it’s my favorite painting and
I wanted to create a painting that would make people really feel impressed and
confused and wants to discover the meaning behind it. The Starry Night symbolizes Van
Gogh's deteriorating mental state so I wanted to use this painting to express myself as
Van Gogh did. After learning about how to collage different pictures and painting
techniques I started my painting with yellow acrylic paint to make the skeleton of my
work. I decided to view the image of myself from the front side to express the emotions
on my face like seriousness.

Before starting my painting, I went to the drama classroom and I decided to use red and
blue colors as lighting and which created a pinkish color in my picture. I wanted to use
that color because i like to be seen and noticeable in my regular life as well. I took other
pictures with different angles and lighting but my favorite and most expressive picture
was the one in that I looked straight and serious at the camera.

In my painting, we can observe neon colors in my portrait and blue, red, and pink colors
in the background. The neon color on my portrait represents the joy and excitement of
the nightlife which I enjoy a lot and the blended blue and red colors represent the sunset
which you can find a lot in my picture gallery on my phone which is the main focus of my
piece. The focal point of my painting is to describe my own personality by using vibrant
colors and the movement in the background.

I also decided to include some buildings in Istanbul behind my portrait and painted them
in black and white which helps to explain the time that I couldn’t spend in my hometown
because of some political issues (6 years) and create melancholy in the painting.
I really feel that the combination of these images conveys shows how I ended up in the
place where am I right now. I had to go through a lot of bad and good experiences to
find my identity and I used art which is my air, it lifts me up, makes me feel free, and
saves me.

Nurefsan Dogruguven