Filiz Piyale Onat was born in Istanbul, in 1982. In 2015 she graduated from Yeditepe University Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Plastic Arts. After her undergraduate degree, she has accomplished MFA degree in Plastic Arts at Yeditepe University. In 2016, 2017 and 2018 she has been invited as a participant at Altonale Festival in Hamburg by Frise Gallery. As part of Altonale Festival, Onat has attended not only to exhibitions but also workshop events. In 2019 she has participated the workshop on “Human Drawing in Academic Method” at Florence Academy of Arts in Italy. She is currently studying at Yeditepe University Ph.D. program on Plastic Arts and Painting and continues as a research assistant.
In Filiz Piyale Onat’s art, descriptions of mountains, cliffs and stagnant waters are instruments that reflect the notions of silence and solitude. Her compositions are dominated by the tension between the two-dimensional, grandiose and calm natural landscapes and the three-dimensional, small-scale, usually man-made singular elements they contain. The artist uses this tension to point at the loneliness of the individual.
Filiz Piyale Onat is questioning the beauty of nature and the place of human in the nature in her recent paintings which she is interpreting the “nocturnes” each with a different character, are either calm as a starry sky or overshadowed by clouds that obscuring the audience’s soul. Frédéric Chopin, who created the most remarkable examples of “nocturnes”, which means “musical composition inspired by the night”, published 18 nocturnes during his lifetime. Filiz Piyale Onat is pointing the complex relationship between audience and nature by using different techniques in her paintings which have the same names with the 18 nocturnes.
