Couturier (2023) Original Oil Painting by Fatih Sungurtekin

In Couturier, Fatih Sungurtekin bridges cultures and crafts, drawing inspiration from Turkish lacework and Japanese kimono embroidery. Through this cross-cultural lens, he reflects on how traditional motifs carry shared stories, memories, and social textures. Using oil on canvas, the artist translates the couturier’s frame once used for embroidery into a symbolic mirror of his own canvas, where each brushstroke becomes a memory woven into form. The artwork connects the intricate shapes of lace to forms found in both micro and macrocosmic nature. Planetary patterns, plant structures, and even cellular elements merge with the delicacy of traditional needlework. This fusion offers a new perspective: a universe built from the smallest handwoven threads to the vast shapes of the cosmos. It reveals how pattern, rhythm, and memory transcend material.

At the heart of the painting is the couturier, quietly immersed in her frame. Her silent labor parallels the artist’s own introspection. Her dreams and the artist’s memories merge what she imagines in thread, he recreates in paint. Sungurtekin honors the often overlooked domestic artistry and elevates it into a contemporary narrative of heritage, femininity, and continuity. Couturier is a meditation on craft and care on how our traditions, no matter how small or intimate, shape the larger cultural landscape. By integrating personal moments and ancestral practices, the painting becomes both a tribute and a transformation of time-honored techniques.

Materials used:

oil

Details:

• Oil painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 100 x 120 x 3cm (unframed)
• Ready to hang
• Signed on the front
• Style: Unspecified
• Subject: People and portraits