About me
I am Nergiz, a painter based in Passau, Germany, working in gouache at miniature scale. My paintings are botanical and landscape subjects built up on dark grounds, and each one is presented in a frame I have either sourced or made, so that the painting and its housing are finished together as a single object.
My subjects come from close observation of gardens, water and woodland, with a debt to nineteenth century garden painting. I was born in Turkey and live in Germany.
Alongside my studio practice I am a doctoral researcher in computer science. The two share a habit of working slowly, at very small scale, on problems that only resolve close up.
My paintings are sold directly through my studio shop, NeyuuArt Paintings on Etsy, and I take a small number of commissions each year.
Selected details
- Medium
- Gouache on paper
- Scale
- Miniature, typically 9 to 20 cm
- Framing
- Antique, restored or hand-built by the artist
- Based
- Passau, Bavaria, Germany
- Languages
- Turkish, English, German
Artist statement
I make paintings that cannot be separated from their frames.
Some of the frames are antique, found in flea markets and junk shops. Others I build myself in ceramic. Either way the frame comes first, and its shape decides the painting that goes inside it: an arch becomes a chapel window, an oval becomes a portrait of a single flower, a deep tray becomes a garden seen from above.
I work in gouache on dark grounds. Starting from black means the light has to be built forward in layers, so a hawthorn branch or a stand of birches surfaces slowly out of shadow instead of being drawn onto an empty white page. It is a slow way to paint and I like that about it.
The subjects are things that stop me on a walk. Water moving. Leaves catching sun. Flowers that are nearly over. Everything is small, roughly the size of a hand, because a small painting asks a viewer to come close, and coming close is the point.
Nergiz, Passau, 2026
Passau, Germany
Where the work comes from
