In Alancık, a small village near Zonguldak on Türkiye's Black Sea coast, an 81-year-old grandmother has become a local art story worth knowing. Şahinde Ermiş, who started painting at 59 after watching American TV instructor Bob Ross demonstrate his wet-on-wet oil technique, has just opened her second exhibition — 23 oil paintings on show, two decades after her first.
Ermiş's route into art was unconventional. She had been interested in painting as a child, but after losing her husband 39 years ago she put that aside to raise their four children. It was only when she came across Ross's television programmes 22 years ago that she decided to try again. She bought her own supplies from a stationery shop and taught herself at home, fitting painting in around housework and tending the garden.
Over the years she has produced around 80 oil paintings. Her first exhibition came in 2006, with 44 works. The second opened on a Sunday this September, drawing Zonguldak's deputy governor Halis Hacıismailoğlu, other provincial officials and local visitors. Her subjects are the everyday scenery around her — landscapes, houses, the sea, water and trees — the Black Sea countryside rendered in the calm, methodical style Ross made famous.
Speaking at the opening, Ermiş struggled to describe what the moment meant to her. "I'm happy, I can't put my feelings into words," she said, adding that painting means a great deal to her and that she loses herself in it while she works.
Why should a traveller care? Zonguldak is hardly a headline destination — it's a working Black Sea port city better known for coal mining than culture. But stories like Ermiş's point to the region's quieter appeal: forested hills, village life, and a slow rhythm far removed from the Aegean and Mediterranean crowds. Alancık sits within easy reach of the city, and a visit to Zonguldak pairs well with the Black Sea coast's unspoiled stretches and inland mountain villages. It's also simply a good reminder that creative communities thrive in unexpected corners of the country — and that Ross's gentle teaching found its way onto an easel in a Turkish village, where it stayed for more than two decades.
For anyone drawn to offbeat cultural encounters rather than big-ticket sights, the Ermiş story is a reason to look beyond Türkiye's usual itinerary and consider the country's northern coast, where the most memorable experiences are often the ones you stumble into rather than plan.
