The Language of Order

Uxbridge House in Mayfair was designed in 1721–23 by Giacomo Leoni, an architect whose work helped bring Palladian principles into English architectural life. Now home to RH London, the building holds several histories within its walls. It has been altered, repurposed and reimagined; its character is not exhausted by the intention of its original designer. There is something fitting about encountering Vitruvius and Palladio here. Their books propose an architecture of intelligible relationships: between
part and whole, structure and ornament, the human body and the space it inhabits.

Vitruvius wrote of firmitas, utilitas and venustas — strength, usefulness and beauty. Palladio gave renewed force to ideas of symmetry and proportion, constructing an architectural language of measured relationships. Their influence remains powerful. Yet the longer I looked, the more I wondered what an ideal of balance can tell us about the people who inhabit it.

In one room, a fragmented sculptural torso stands before a densely layered drawing of human bodies. The contrast is arresting: one form reduced to an incomplete figure, the other multiplied almost beyond containment. Both speak through the body, yet neither offers a reassuring image of wholeness. Rather than diminishing their presence, these interruptions make the figures more compelling. They suggest that the body is never merely an object to be measured. It also carries memory, conflict, desire and change.

For me, the classical ideal becomes most interesting at precisely this point: not as a formula to repeat, or a lost perfection to recover, but as a structure against which lived experience can press. Proportion may establish an order. It cannot resolve the contradictions of the person within it.

The Figure and the Self

Portraiture has always relied upon visible conventions: posture, costume, gesture and the deliberate presentation of a face. Such details can give a person an air of authority or composure, suggesting that identity might be made legible at a glance. But outward form and inward experience seldom correspond so neatly. A composed expression may conceal uncertainty; strength may exist alongside fragility.

In my own paintings, historical portraiture is not an exercise in nostalgia. It offers an inherited vocabulary of dignity, permanence and expectation. I use that vocabulary to question the very certainty it appears to promise. Each figure occupies a space between what is shown and what remains unspoken, between the identities we are given and those we continue to construct.

A portrait, to me, is never a final account of a person. It is a fragment of a self still becoming. This is why classical forms remain so relevant: they give contemporary psychological uncertainty a structure against which to become visible. The history of representation is present, but its authority is no longer unquestioned.

Walking through RH London, I was drawn less to the idea of perfection than to the tension between continuity and change. The architectural setting proposes harmony; the fragmented bodies suggest what harmony cannot fully contain. Their coexistence creates room for a more searching kind of beauty — one that does not depend upon being complete.

Historically, portraiture was built to resist change. A painted face carried status, lineage, beauty and authority beyond the instability of an individual life. The person might age, lose power or disappear, but the portrait continued to insist on permanence.

I am drawn to that authority, but I do not entirely trust it.

The women in my paintings are not presented as fixed identities. They are imagined figures, although fragments of my own appearance often enter their faces. I do not consider them conventional self-portraits. Each one holds a different stage, pressure or possibility within an evolving self.

Motherhood made this instability impossible for me to ignore. Becoming responsible for another life does not erase the person one was before, but it changes the architecture around her. Ambition, vulnerability, independence and care begin to occupy the same psychological space. Identity does not move neatly from one version to another. Its earlier forms remain present.

This is why geometry appears in my work. The grid promises structure. The chessboard offers rules, positions and possible movements. Yet no system can fully explain the figure placed inside it. Her outward composure may be convincing, but it is never complete evidence of what she has experienced.

Oil paint allows me to build that uncertainty slowly. A face develops through layers, corrections and concealed decisions. What appears stable on the surface may have been revised many times underneath. In this sense, the material behaves like identity itself: the final image contains versions that are no longer visible but have not entirely disappeared.

My use of historical portraiture is therefore not nostalgic. I am interested in what happens when a visual language designed to declare permanence is asked to hold psychological change. Can a figure possess authority without pretending to be resolved? Can stillness represent an active state of becoming?

I believe a contemporary portrait should leave room for that incompleteness.

The object may endure, but the identity it contains should remain alive. I do not want my paintings to tell viewers who a woman definitively is. I want them to hold the more difficult and human question of who she is still becoming.

Every painting I create carries a story, and it means a great deal to see that work recognised on an international platform.

Thank you @visualartopen and @visualartistsassociation for this honour. Congratulations to all the talented artists, and I’m looking forward to the next stage of the competition.

“It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”
— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

This line, spoken by the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s chess-structured novel, captures the paradox of movement within systems: effort does not guarantee progress, and motion without strategy leads only to repetition.

Kıslaoğlu draws from this literary foundation to position the Red Queen not as a decorative monarch, but as a symbol of disciplined authority. Within Carroll’s world, identity and power are defined by placement on the board by rules, rank, and consequence. The queen embodies command inside constraint.

The painting translates this philosophy into a contemporary visual language. The figure’s composed posture and direct gaze suggest awareness rather than impulse. Strength is rendered through restraint; dominance through precision. The geometric costume echoes the chessboard’s architecture, reinforcing themes of structure, hierarchy, and calculated motion. The knight emblem signals tactical intelligence power exercised with foresight.

Rather than celebrating speed or spectacle, The Red Queen reflects on strategic endurance: the capacity to move deliberately within rigid systems while maintaining presence and control.

This work forms part of Kışlaoğlu’s ongoing 64 Series, an exploration of silent power structures, human roles, and the psychological landscapes of strategy.

Artist Statement
“I am interested in power that understands its environment. The Red Queen reminds us that movement alone is not mastery awareness is.”

There is a difference between movement and power.

In Queen Over Knight, Simay Kislaoglu explores quiet authority through the language of chess.

A woman stands still, calm, and self-possessed.
Above her rises the knight symbol of action, impulse, and unpredictability.

The knight moves fast.
The queen sees far.

Although the knight is placed higher, the woman carries the presence of the queen the most powerful figure on the board. This contrast is intentional. Height is not dominance. Motion is not control.

The painting reflects a simple truth about life:
real power is not loud. It is aware.

Part of the artist’s 64 Series, inspired by the chessboard’s sixty-four squares, the work examines strategy, hierarchy, and inner discipline the silent forces that shape decisions and destinies.

There is no battle here.
Only mastery.

“Power is not in rushing forward.
Power is in knowing when not to move.”

Sancta Potentia | The 64 Series

Oil on canvas, 100 × 150 cm  

In Sancta Potentia, contemporary figurative oil painter Simay Kışlaoğlu explores “holy power” not as spectacle, but as purity a strength that does not shout, chase, or prove itself. The work offers a quiet proposition: the cleanest power is the one that remains unstained.

A frontal female figure meets the viewer with calm directness. Behind her, a luminous golden halo is not decoration; it functions as a sign of inner clarity an untouched space held in discipline. Gold appears here not as luxury, but as clean light: restraint, devotion, and self-command made visible.

The stillness of the portrait is deliberate. Nothing performs. Nothing begs. The authority of the image comes from control power expressed as composure rather than aggression.

With Sancta Potentia, Simay Kışlaoğlu continues her ongoing figurative language where symbolism is used with economy and precision. The painting stands as an icon for the present time: not religious in message, but sacred in feeling because it honors what is rare: purity.

Artwork details
• Title: Sancta Potentia
• Artist: Simay Kışlaoğlu
• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Size: 100 × 150 cm
• Date: January 2026

Simay Kışlaoğlu | CHECKMATE

January 2026 — Istanbul

Oil on canvas, 120 × 180 cm | The 64 Series

Checkmate is not about the game.
It is about the moment you stop explaining yourself.

In this painting, Simay Kışlaoğlu builds a portrait out of inner discipline. The chessboard is not scenery; it is structure. It wraps the figure like a rule she chose voluntarily. Around her, the pieces hover like thoughts with weight: decisions that stayed, memories that shaped her, a future already sensed.

Nothing is dramatic here. That is the point.
The tension is quiet. The power is contained.

For the first time, Simay Kışlaoğlu leaves her familiar reds and blues behind and enters an earth-led palette brownish tones, muted gold, deep burgundy. The color doesn’t decorate the painting; it steadies it. The silence becomes heavier. The presence becomes final.

Checkmate stands as a turning point within the 64 Series a work that clarifies an emerging signature: classical precision, symbolic economy, and stoic stillness as a form of strength.

Artwork: Checkmate, oil on canvas, 120 × 180 cm
Series: The 64 Series | Date: January 2026
Instagram: @simay_kislaoglu

“Each painting tells a story. I can’t sit still I have to create, I have to paint. I want to mark my name in the world. Even when I’m gone, I want people to remember me through my artworks.”

The Chess Series: Power, Identity, and Inner Battles
In her signature Chess Series, Simay Kışlaoğlu places herself in symbolic roles Queen, Knight, Rook exploring the complexity of human decisions and emotional struggles. She uses the chessboard as a metaphor for life: strategy, risk, sacrifice, and the battle between logic and emotion.
These works are not about victory. They are about courage the courage to stand before making a move.

Cinders and Queens
150 × 150 cm · Oil on Canvas
“Where power rises from ashes.”
Cinders and Queens represents rebirth after destruction. Inspired by the myth of the phoenix, the painting speaks of transformation through pain. It expresses that true strength is not given it is forged.
The message is clear: even after collapse, something stronger can rise.
As Nietzsche said, “What does not kill me makes me stronger.”

Queen of Illusions
90 × 120 cm · Oil on Canvas
Influenced by the elegance of classical masters like Vermeer, Queen of Illusions connects past and present. The calm expression, soft light, and realistic detail create a sense of intimacy yet the bold checkerboard introduces modern tension.
It asks a quiet question: What is real, and what is illusion?
In today’s world of masks and shifting truths, the painting challenges the viewer to look deeper.

Red Gambit
120 × 180 cm · Oil on Canvas
In Red Gambit, life is shown as a chessboard of choices. Black and white represent strategy and logic but through them cuts a stroke of red, symbolizing passion, risk, and instinct.
This painting reminds us that true mastery is not avoiding mistakes, but daring to act.
It does not ask, Will you win?
It asks, Will you dare to move?

Contemporary Istanbul – 20th Edition
A Sold-Out Success
Simay Kışlaoğlu’s participation in the 20th Edition of Contemporary Istanbul, represented by AWC Gallery, marked a major moment in her career. Her works attracted high collector interest, and most pieces were sold during the fair.
Viewers were drawn not only to her technique, but to the emotional power in her gaze and symbolism. Word spread quickly: a unique artistic voice had arrived.

Legacy
Simay Kışlaoğlu paints to build memory to leave proof of spirit. Her art carries a timeless aim: to remain long after the world grows silent.
“I do not paint to be seen. I paint to remain.”