BILGE UGURSU
- ARTISTIC HUB MAGAZINE
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
BERLIN | GERMANY
The Silence of Colors: A World Where Emotions Take Shape
In the world of an artist who sees thought as movement and emotion as color, every painting becomes a sentence in a quiet yet powerful story of human experience. “Her artistic journey has always been guided not by ambition, but by a desire to understand herself and the world through color, movement, and rhythm. Between the canvas and the digital realm, between introspection and connection with others, she explores the boundaries of perception, consciousness, and emotion. In her work, science meets poetry, melancholy becomes a space of transformation, and art turns into a language for what words cannot express.
In this conversation with Artistic Hub Magazine, she reveals how her paintings come to life, how emotions transform into form, and why art remains, for her, the most authentic way to understand humanity.
Looking back at your artistic journey, when did you first realize that painting and art could become your language and your profession?
I think I’ve always known it, even as a child, before I could name it. I wasn’t very communicative back then. Words didn’t come easily, so I expressed myself through drawing. It was my way of speaking, even with my parents. They probably knew long before I did that painting would become a major part of my life. It officially became my profession in 2017, when I started exhibiting my works to larger audiences. Of course, I had shown pieces before that, but 2017 marks the beginning of my artistic path as it is today. It always takes a while until one can find their artistic voice and direction, because it is quite different from simply being able to paint something. The essence is having something to say, because it gives you a voice and direction. Before 2017, I was just painting, but then I think I finally found my voice and path as well.
In your practice there is a strong dialogue between classical painting and digital expression. What does this transition from one medium to the other bring to you, and how do you decide whether a work will remain on paper or also evolve into the digital space?
It always depends on how the piece evolves. Painting is a very instinctive process, and every piece has its own rhythm. Any painter would understand what I mean when I say, the painting speaks. Sometimes it calls for vibrant colours, more intensity and energy, movement that can only come alive in the digital space. Others feel complete as they are because they are somehow more fragile and silent. If I add one more colour, figure, or detail, they would then lose their essence. That’s when I know I shouldn’t touch them anymore. So, the painting decides where it wants to live. I just listen :)
You often speak about the connection between art and science, and how psychology and neuroscience open new paths for understanding perception and emotion. In what way does this part of your professional life shape the gestures you make on the canvas?
For me, science and art are inseparable. Understanding psychology and neuroscience profoundly influences the way I see, and therefore, the way I paint. It gives me new colours and forms to explore on the canvas. How the brain translates emotion into perception, how we construct our inner worlds, what moves us, what breaks us. Reading and exploring these questions constantly feed my imagination. So I can’t really separate art from science in my journey, they are both ways of trying to understand what it means to be human in the end.
The titles of your works, such as Comfortably Numb, Anesthesia, or Orbits of Silence, carry a powerful emotional message. Do titles appear at the beginning as ideas that guide the painting, or do they come at the end as reflections of what the work has revealed?
The feeling behind the title is always there from the beginning. It’s the emotional seed, from which the painting grows. It starts as a feeling, something wordless, and I follow it until the figures begin to appear. The concrete title usually comes later, once the painting is complete. But the emotion is there from the very first brushstroke, and it’s actually what makes me pick up the brush.
In the series Echoes of Blues and Love and Sickness, one can sense melancholy, inner conflict, but also quiet strength and transformation. When you look at these works today, do you see them more as a personal diary of emotions or as universal stories in which the audience can recognize themselves?
I see all my collections as personal diaries. They are like pages filled with my emotions, thoughts, and also my observations of others. But that doesn’t make them any less universal. Melancholy itself is a shared human feeling; when I paint it, it may begin as my own story, but the moment someone else stands before the painting, it becomes theirs too.
When someone sees one of my works and feels something, even something I never intended, it transforms into their story. That exchange, that silent conversation between me and them, is what I love most about exhibiting art. It’s where our stories intertwine, and art basically becomes a language that connects us. That’s the most beautiful part of exhibiting and it reminds me how deeply connected we all are. Such experiences inspire me even more. So they are all my personal stories as well as universal stories in the end.
Love and Sickness
If you were to choose one work from your collection and tell its story, explaining how it came into being, what emotions shaped it, and how you see it now, which piece would you choose and why?
That’s such a difficult question, they are all like my children, each carries a heartbeat of its own. But Anesthesia holds a particularly special place in me. It was born out of a deeply personal experience, capturing that strange moment between consciousness and unconsciousness, so the fragile transition between presence and absence. Many people have told me they can feel that same state when they look at it, which makes it even more meaningful. It’s rare when a work reflects both your personal and technical evolution so completely. So I think of it as one of the most special pieces I’ve ever painted.
When you think about the years ahead, how do you imagine your artistic path? Do you see it more through intimate cycles and explorations within the studio, or through larger projects and collaborations that involve the public and the community?
My journey has always begun in solitude, in the quiet of my little art corner at home where time seems to slow down. That solitude allows me to explore freely. But in the past few years, as my work has reached wider audiences, I’ve realized how deeply connection shapes creation. Watching someone’s expression shift in front of a painting, listening to their stories, hearing them share what they feel…that’s so priceless! Strangers become mirrors in those moments, when they share what they feel, and somehow, it reflects back to me. These encounters make me feel so alive.
So while I’ll always need the intimacy of my own space, I’m also drawn to larger projects and collaborations, anything that allows art to reach more people. Life is so short, and it can easily lose its meaning, so I want to spend it creating, sharing, and listening. I simply want to share as much art and humanity as I can before it ends.
Through paintings that breathe with their own rhythm and titles that echo emotion, the artist reminds us that every color, every movement, and every moment of awareness belongs to our shared human experience. Her work unites the personal and the universal, turning introspection into a bridge between the heart and understanding. In the stillness where her art is born, creativity finds its true essence: connection, presence, and sincerity that exist beyond words.
