Işık, originally graduated in Environmental Engineering, but instead she chose this entirely different path for her life and has been working full time as a botanical artist for over 15 years. She is very glad that she made this decision, though as the child of a botanist father and growing up surrounded by wild nature made her decision easy.
Işık and I know each other since the childhood years we’ve spent in Fırtına Valley. When we were kids, vacations was all about chasing after adventures on the mountains. Even our parents immigrated to the cities and started new lives years ago, they still always kept us connected to our hometown village.
As soon as the school was finished we were there for the whole summer vacation. When we have a chat over these years with Işık, we realize that this had always been a dilemma in our lives.
Which one was the real world? Was it the life in crowded and loud cities? or just being in the beautiful mountains peacefully.
These questions still chasing us. We live in a world which being in a permanent situation is meaningless. But still, we always search for a place for earthing and rooting ourselves. After years, when we started to choose our own paths in life as grown up adults, it was the nature and generally the village life was calling us. We decided to spend most of our times in Fırtına Valley. And years later, our paths crossed again with my childhood friend.
I am a big fan of Işık’s works and have been following her for years. Being a botanical artist is not a very common profession in Turkey. Işık is one of the main pioneers in this area and I wanted to be a mediator to introduce her work to more people. She is drawing plants in life size. Here is what Işık tells about the collection that we are happy to sell in Moyy Atölye shop.
This gallery only includes some amazing orchids which are threatened due to over collection.
All paintings have prepared for a series of exhibition in China, to increase the awareness of protection of these species. All the samples are collected in Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden in March, 2015 and have been exhibited in six different Botanic Gardens across China. Species are generally from Yunnan Province of China, but there are also some species from other countries of South West Asia.
You can read more about Işık Güner on; www.isikguner.com
Photography: www.ekinozbicer.com