The Cat Got Your Fish: The Art of Burak Senturk

Istanbul based illustrator Burak Senturk has led a fascinating life. Aside from going to college for graphic arts and spending time working for Oğuz Aral, a famous illustrator in Europe who was selling a million comics a week in the 70s, Burak spent many years serving in the Turkish military, a couple of which were in highly dangerous areas. He also had a career as a professional musician whose highly successful band wrote the music and lyrics for the modern opera called “Dar-ül Love" which premiered in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. After the music career died down, Burak returned to art and currently works designing T-shirts for the biggest textile company in Turkey. At night, he works on his own art and has recently garnered quite a bit of attention with his eye catching illustrations and solo art shows.

Photo by Semih Kurtulus

In a recent interview with Turkish online art magazine Kat.io, Burak gave the most amazing answer when asked about figuratively escaping the confines of Istanbul:

İstanbul is an interesting city. It’s like an organism. Even if I had an escape plan, I can bet İstanbul would ruin that plan. We all have plans to live in happy little corners. I don’t know if I can entirely remove myself from this city. But I do want to escape at times. For now, these escapes are only in my mind. What will the future hold? I don’t know either. We’ll see.

When I contacted Burak about featuring his art, he replied, "I'm not good at English. I hope it's not a problem about that article. Maybe You sould correcting my mistakes :)" Honestly, I wouldn't dare. When an artist is this great, tiny mistakes in English are 100% ok by me! Burak's work really kind of speaks for itself.

If you would like to explore more about Burak Senturk on your own, I would suggest his Website, Behance, Facebook, and Twitter.

Video courtesy of Kat.io