BE-LEAF YOURSELF
From Dobby the Elf to Lilo and Stitch, meet the artist using the great outdoors as his canvas!
Meet the man turning nature into art with his intricate leaf cuttings. Featuring anything from Dobby the Elf to Lilo and Stitch, artist Kanat Nurtazin, 29, from Kazakhstan, has even caught the attention of Disney!
Kanat began making leaf cuttings in 2013 as a hobby, and now estimates he has created around 500 of the foliage cut-outs.
Kanat says; ‘I was searching for work and I started experimenting with different things such as writing poems, creating music and I just stopped on drawing.’
He had seen cutouts on paper before and returning home in autumn when there were plenty of leaves on the ground, he decided to use them instead of paper.
‘I was a self taught artist and it was interesting to me to use different materials,’ he says.
Kanat currently has almost 70 methods, including some that use tape off coffee packets.
He poses each cutout in front of the sky, buildings, flowers or anything else that fits in with the design on the leaf, and takes a photo of it.
After discovering his talent, Kanat began posting the images of cutting on Instagram, where they gained popularity, and it was then that he was contacted by Nickelodeon and Disney to help create content. However, Kanat insists that he still does the art mainly as a hobby, but he will sometimes auction them off, sending the proceeds to charities.
For Kanat, his leaf art is a way for him to express and share himself with the world.
‘Art for me is something to transfer yourself to another place, to be alone with your thoughts.
‘It’s just a place where I can be myself and share my ideas.
‘Some of my works are touching social problems and I try to express myself with the help of art,’ he says.
Kanat is self taught!