imperial caïques have not come down to us in detail. We know these vessels only from Melling’s engravings and the paintings of Ayvazovsky and Preziosi. While we have long lamented the absence in the history of Turkish painting of any painters of the sea or ships other than Diyarbakırlı Tahsin, a fleet looming suddenly on the horizon now looks like putting an end, to some extent anyway, to these regrets of ours. Haslet Soyöz, whom we have always known as a cartoonist, is coming at us full steam ahead with his ‘Ships of Paradise’.
FROM CARTOONS TO OILS
Like many others, I became acquainted with Haslet Soyöz through his comic strips in the daily papers. The ‘big’ questions asked by that memorable ’Little Guy’ of his still ring somewhere in my childish head. For some reason however I was not at all surprised when the creator of Küçümen, who has never lost those wild childish eyes of his, came out thirty years later with a whopping series of ship paintings, perhaps because I could detect in those giant canvases the signs of a sensitive soul that still views the world through a child’s eyes.