Erol Ceylan never pursued a career in arts but this did not stop him from finding unusual places to reflect his passion. For the 57-year-old street cleaner in Araklı, a small town in the northern Turkish province of Trabzon, a dirty car in need of a wash is an ideal canvas.
During breaks from his job, Ceylan shapes the thick layer of dust on cars with his hands, sometimes drawing a simple bird or a man and a woman longingly gazing at each other.
Ceylan is a middle school dropout and never had proper training in arts. His passion for drawing dates back to his childhood. “My uncle gave my mother a photo of his children. I secretly took it out from where my mother kept it and drew a replica of the photo on the back of it. My mother was very angry because the original photo was damaged but I never gave up drawing,” he recalled.
Along with his drawings on car windows, Ceylan uses regular paper at home and has a personal collection of oil paintings and cartoons, along with his amateur sculptures. “My teacher at middle school discovered my talent and told me to enroll at a fine arts school but I dropped out. I regret it now,” he told Ihlas News Agency (IHA) on Wednesday.
Ceylan mostly picks parked cars for his drawings but he "doesn’t miss" when he sees a car dirty enough to showcase his talent. “I saw a car stopping at lights the other day. I didn't have a lot of time but managed to scrawl something on it. When I turned back, I saw people in the car applauding,” he proudly said.
