ARTIST STATEMENT What I call my DISSOLVE SERIES is the output from experimentation that took place during the summer of 2011. I wanted to create a different texture or style in my works, so began experimenting with organic tree resin as an oil painting medium. During my student days in Istanbul I learned that ancient masters had used natural products to create paints and painting mediums. I set about researching and discovered how to develop a special organic resin from the roots of trees. This medium is the right consistency to allow me to dissolve paint in ways that achieve the effect I want. I created some small paintings that I call 'tryings', then went on to produce an initial series of twelve works on board before incorporating the Dissolve technique in many future works. In creating this series I continue to use large and small portraits as an expressive form but they vary in appearance from those made using the Turkish Whirling technique. The large / small, inner / outer, juxtapositions are intended to convey my thoughts about the impact of world events and major ideologies on the conditions of each person's individual experience. Although each person experiences their own individual fragment of the world, there is an identifiable range of emotional responses that are part of our shared human condition. I use my artistic practice to explore this universal experience. I see all life as a painting. I don't paint to make the wall beautiful, rather to express my thoughts, feelings and observations of life around me. The daily events of my life and the lives of others may trigger the idea for a painting. During the process of painting I explore the parallels in broader society and the deeper psychological meaning of the events that have played out in terms of people's personal lives and also at the level of communities, nations and international politics.