My personal interest in visual arts has initially emerged about ten years ago during my researches on art of photography and photo editing. When my interest has turned into ambition, I decided to study Visual Communication Design as major in Bilgi University. Academic studies and school projects not only provided the opportunity to improve myself in photography, but also gave me the chance and freedom to do experiments on numerous fields of digital arts without depending on a particular branch merely. Sinceall digital areas are somewhat connected to each other, every different project requires knowledge of diverse programs. While I focused mainly on graphic designing, I also shot some video clips as well as getting involved in many short film/quickie projects either for directing or editing. Creating visual images for brand marks expanded my horizon in designing and typography, shooting photos and videos helped me to learn the details of camera use. Besides that, I was able to advance my coding skills while web designing and improved in after effects programming during video editing. Meanwhile, I kept and still keep on watching tutorials via web in order to foster my skills cause in this field learning has to be an on-going process to become an up to date artist. Recently, I have been focusing predominantly on collage art, and creating my portfolio accordingly. I started working on collage art four years ago, but those pieces were just still images. After a while, I decided to gather up my photoshop and after effect skills, which led me to my current art works. The creation process begins with nothing a flashing idea which influences me in daily life. Then, I try to enhance this original idea by using stock images in case correspondent materials are in hand. If they lack or are not appropriate for that project, I shoot the photo or video by myself. Sometimes a visual image or an ancient artwork influences me profoundly and I find myself searching for a new perspective to create within. On the other hand, digital painting takes a long time, approximately 12-18 hours, and makes me create something unique for every new day. That’s why despite my tendency and enthusiasm in painting, I try to focus mainly on collage where I have further experience. Although I’m truly inspired by eras such as surrealism, retro-futurism, synthwave, vhs and glitch art, i try not to stick into only one specific area in my projects. My tremendous admiration for Carl Sagan might be considered as the reason of space and universe themesthat could generally be observed in my artworks.
© Ozan Özçelik | Artist Biography, Artworks & Gallery | www.ozanozcelik.com
