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Buy a digital subscription Go to the Digital EditionIşik Güner gave up engineering to travel the world making exquisite botanical paintings which have brought her international fame. But tragedy in the Himalayas led her to return to the beloved Black Sea valley of her youth, which this year inspired a solo exhibition of her work in the old village schoolhouse.Harriet Rix, herself from a distinguished botanical family, was there to celebrate
Among the ancient forests above the Black Sea, where the tea plantations and great stone-built mansions of the Hemşin tribe tumble down precipitous valley sides to the turbulent waters of the Fırtına river (the Storm), a singular artist has mounted a singular exhibition. Işık Güner is one of the finest botanical artists alive today, whose work in China and Scotland, Chile and Romania has been widely acclaimed, but Habitat is her first exhibition in Çamlıhemşin, her home and the place she describes as her environmental niche, the place where she fits in. When not living in Istanbul and Ankara, Işık was based for years in her grandparents’ chestnut konak, until last month, when she finished building her own house on the side of the mountain, just above the Güner settlement where her cousins, aunts and relations still live.
The chestnut houses and occasional stone konaks of the valley are all embedded in the mix of plants that inspired the exhibition; beyond small tea plantations, a lush undergrowth of heracleum and colchicum, buttercup, vetch and galium grows under chestnuts, beech and fir and across the small clearing of the graveyard by the road. Habitat is based on the detail of this amazing diversity. “Is there any plant that you would be willing to lose from this composition?” Işık asks.
Don McCullin and Barnaby Rogerson travel back in time, elated by the enduring power of Mithras, god of the sun
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