By Heidi Trautmann

I missed the opening of the exhibition; I would have liked to speak to the students of Osman Keten. The works of 14 students of his were on display from 12 – 22 April in the EMAA Centre – European Mediterranean Art Association in Nicosia. Osman Keten is deeply involved in EMAA and its art educational programmes for children and adults; he has been its President several times; at the moment since April this year Zehra Şonya has been elected to be EMAA’s President for the next two years. I often go to visit my art friends to see what they are doing and what they are working on. Here is one of such reports of one of my visits.

http://www.heiditrautmann.com/category.aspx?CID=3752775127#.WPwor2l96Uk

Osman Keten is a very experimentally minded and working artist and there is nothing which he does not use for his art, but, a big BUT, Osman attaches great importance to learning the tools properly; he is himself great in pencil drawing.... and he teaches his students good brush work and to execute any work they do with great care.

I keep saying that we don’t do enough pencil drawing in art, we learn the values of black and white tones and giving depth.

Sinem, one of his students, was on duty for the exhibition and she explained to me that she has had a six-months-course with Osman Keten in his studio in the Arabahmet Quarter and at the end of it his students are now exhibiting their work. She will continue to have another course because she learns quite a lot with him.

We saw still lives, landscapes, nude drawings plus a conceptual project which must have given the students a lot of fun and excitement. Osman Keten had created the head of Hermes and each student was to decorate and/or transform it according to their imagination; you can see that a lot of thinking was spent on them.