"I don't consider self-taught a title. I'm self-taught in a lot of things. I learned how to wash, dress myself... I've been self-taught my whole life," he says, laughing. "If you take classes, teachers talk and they grade, but once you're out of that classroom, you paint on your own. I think there are a lot of people who paint passionately on their own - whatever their educational background - and that's exactly what I do.

"I don't believe in titles. I'm not folk, outsider, naive, intuitive, visionary, brut, or whatever you want to call it. Those are all fun little words people like to use because they have filing cabinets that they use to categorize artists. I just paint."

A fairer assessment of Isik's success is the broad human appeal of his paintings. His characters are like children constantly thrusting themselves into the uncharted adult world; as naive as they are wise, they come across as brave, proud and unashamed. His skies are filled with homey lines, jig-jags or dots rather than ordinary stars - a labor-intensive part of his work that is as essential to his style as the animals themselves.

It is that youthful quality that most likely brought him attention from the Abbeville Press, one of the largest publishers of children's books in the world. In the next couple of years, Isik may attempt to write a children's tale for publication backwards: first the images, then the storyline.

He also rejects the notion that a security guard should be planted between a painting and its admirers. He indulges viewers in their child-like instincts to find out what the image feels like. The bumps on the wolf's back, the metal teeth of the bear and the cat's paint-bristle whiskers are meant to be handled.

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