Art x Adẹ

One of my favourite acronyms is TEAM — Together Everyone Achieves More. A powerful example of this in action is my ongoing art project: a master collage made up of over 35 individually painted, sunset-themed abstract pieces, all stitched together onto a five-square-metre linen fabric. The painting itself was the easy part. The real challenge was the stitching. I had never done any stitching before, so this was unfamiliar territory. That was when I needed help. Grace’s experience became invaluable. She patiently taught me the process. At first, it was awkward — I kept pricking my fingers with the needle, and as I am still struggling with my vision due recent cataract surgeries in both eyes, even threading the needle was no small task. But with Grace in the driving seat, what seemed daunting became doable. What felt slow and frustrating suddenly moved with rhythm and speed. That is the beauty of TEAM. Where one person struggles, another strengthens. Where one hesitates, another gui...

Bridge Over Troubled Water is a meditation on endurance, passage, and the quiet resolve required to move through uncertainty. In this work, the water below is deliberately restless—layered with intense reds, broken whites, and unsettled movement, symbolising struggle, memory, and the turbulence that often accompanies lived experience. The bridge stands as a slender but determined presence across this instability. It does not calm the water beneath it, nor does it attempt to dominate the scene. Instead, it exists as a necessary crossing, an act of continuation. For me, the bridge represents the moments in life when one must keep moving forward, not because conditions are favourable, but because standing still is not an option. The sunset light and its narrow vertical reflection are restrained rather than celebratory. They suggest not comfort or resolution, but persistence, a fragile yet deliberate line cutting through unrest. This is not hope in its idealised form, but endur...

This painting reflects an impressionistic meditation on slavery as a journey, physical, emotional, and spiritual set beneath a burning African sunset.  The figures are rendered as silhouettes, stripped of identity and detail, not to diminish them, but to allow them to stand for countless unnamed lives forced into motion. The sunset dominates the composition, glowing with beauty and cruelty at once. It marks transition rather than rest: the end of freedom, the beginning of suffering, and the slow erasure of certainty. Chains are suggested rather than described, echoing both physical bondage and the invisible weight carried across generations. The road stretches forward without promise or conclusion. In this work, the artist does not seek to narrate history, but to evoke memory and to invite the viewer to walk quietly behind those who were made to journey into the unknown, carrying dignity even as everything else was taken.

  I came across a photograph of a beautiful sunset shared by a member of a neighbourhood platform and sought permission to create an impressionistic interpretation of it. This is the result of that process. While painting, an old song I first heard in 1972 resurfaced in my mind, carrying me back to my early years in the city of Lagos. The song, When the Sun Goes Down by Charles Brown, unexpectedly became the emotional soundtrack to the work. As the sun descended on the canvas, memories of youth, place, and passing time quietly unfolded—proof that a single image can bridge decades, cities, and emotions.

This painting draws inspiration from an Ogidi-Ela legend rooted in River Ohe and its surrounding landscape. It tells the story of Ọmọrohun, a powerful river goddess whose beautiful daughter was captured by seven fishermen and mistaken for a fish. She was carried from the river to the top of a low hill, crying out for her mother to come to her rescue. On the hill, driven by greed and ignorance, the fishermen cut her into seven pieces, ready to be shared among themselves. As they prepared to claim their portions, a violent storm suddenly broke out. Thunder, rain, and darkness filled the sky as Ọmọrohun emerged from the river, running toward the hill in anguish. Terrified by her approach and by the fury of nature itself, the fishermen fled, abandoning the remains on the hill. When the storm finally subsided, the pieces had transformed into seven fish-like stones which, according to legend, remain on the hill to this day. This painting reflects my enduring interest in memory...

We often speak of wisdom as though it naturally comes bundled with kindness, empathy, compassion, and moral clarity. A “wise person,” we assume, must also be good. But life, history, and human experience complicate that assumption. This raises an uncomfortable but important question: can wisdom exist in someone whose character lacks the very virtues we associate with it? Can wisdom be found in a bad person? The answer depends largely on how we define wisdom. If wisdom is understood simply as knowledge, insight, or a deep understanding of how the world and human beings work, then yes—such wisdom can exist in morally flawed individuals. History offers many examples of people who were strategically brilliant, psychologically perceptive, and intellectually sharp, yet destructive, cruel, or self-serving. Their understanding was real. Their foresight was often accurate. What they lacked was not intelligence, but moral grounding. However, if wisdom is understood more fully—as the ...