Featured Artist Friday - Filiz Emma Soyak

One of my favorite things about doing this blog is that it gives me such a good excuse to get in touch and learn more about people who inspire me. One of those people is today's Featured Artist, Filiz Emma Soyak. I had the pleasure of working with Filiz during her time here in Boston, as she was studying for her Master’s in Visual Art Education at Leslie University. Filiz’s life and her experiences are her main inspiration. She has traveled a lot in her life, especially in the last few years, and feels very fortunate for these experiences. She grew up in Belgium, Japan, and the US. Her father is Turkish and her mother is Swedish, so they spent a good bit of her childhood traveling through Europe and Asia, visiting family and exploring new places. Filiz is an incredibly creative and talented artist, who has translated her life experiences into an amazing body of artwork that I was immediately drawn to when I met her. Filiz’ artwork has a dreamlike quality to it, with hints of the places she’s been, a combination of Eastern and Western styles that she is able to blend together incredibly well.

Filiz shared with me the phases of her creative process, which I think are very inspiring. She says that it takes her a few months, even years to process what she experiences but there are always distinct phases. First is the input phase: “This is when I am traveling, discovering, experiencing, absorbing life around me.”  Next is the process phase: “This is when I dialogue, question, learn and understand.” Finally is the output phase: “when I can and need to creatively express what I have discovered and learned. Each phase is ongoing, and can last for months or years, but I am able to listen to my intuition to tell me when I feel the need to move forward.”   

Filiz currently lives and has a studio in Brooklyn, NY, where she is working on a new catalog, a book, and works on paper inspired by Japan as well as other exciting projects. She has a website and blog which she is redesigning – more work will be available online soon. To check out Filiz's incredibly inspiring work now, visit here, or here.