By Heidi Trautmann

On 3 September at 19:00 hrs Bahar Cirali will open her second ‘Artterapi’ Exhibition . I have been to the first one last year where paintings of children and young people were shown and explained. I was amazed about the philosophy of this new form of art education which she calls ‘personal activity classes’.

I want to introduce her and her educational road to the reader:

Bahar Çıralı was born in Kyrenia in 1982. She studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Hacettepe, Turkey. In 2005 she continued her studies at the Academy of Fine Art of Terni, Italy, where she specialized on painting techniques and worked as a drawing teacher. In 2009 she went to London, UK, worked as a private art tutor and at same time she did her master’s degree on expressive techniques and art therapy in Rome, Italy. First travelling to and fro but then moving to Rome for some years. During her stay abroad she did many personal exhibitions and participated in group shows too. In 2011 she returned to Cyprus and opened ARTTERAPI, an art therapy and personal growth centre in Kyrenia.

I had the chance to talk to her several times and also saw her own work at an exhibition in Girne just recently at The House Art Gallery ‘ART ROOMS’. About her work with art therapy she says the following:

“The aim is not to improve the skills of the individual, it is to express oneself without any dictation, to let loose and get carried away with the activity of painting with big brushes and plenty of colour. One project was to create a self-portrait, to answer oneself the question which worries us all our life ‘who aim I’ and at the same time to see how the others represent themselves.”

This philosophy does not apply for children only.