Piril Torgut

Lives and works in CYPRUS

Artist statement

My dad’s side lived right by the sea, my dad is always so proud to call himself a ‘deniz çocuğu’ (sea child), because his parents raised him that way. As a family the sea was almost everything to them. They collected buckets full of seashells and made the most amazing unique furniture pieces out of them – those pieces are still at our house and are priceless to me. I remember my dad and grandmother telling us stories about my grandfather. He was the finest person they could ever describe; British post officer by day, sea shell collector at night. Growing up, I wanted to be like them; as talented an artist as my grandmother, as sea-loving and eccentric as my grandfather, and as creative as my dad. So, when I became an artist, water and sea-life was all that was on my mind. After completing both my studies in the UK, I returned back to my home island as an emerging Cypriot artist to put my efforts and input into helping both to heal the artistic scene and to aid boosting intercommunal cultural work in Cyprus. My work deals with amphibious and marine-life known creatures, and sometimes unknown mythological tetrapods from the Cretaceous Period. Humpback whales have an imposing physicality in my work and assert an embodied reality beyond the metaphorical. The abstract-realist paintings I produce are often heavy with textured oil paints and vibrant colours that are unusual for certain marine scenarios yet relatable to observers’ contemporary artistic mood. My current work is...

Artwork