Posts

Bridge Over Troubled Water

Image
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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Slavery, Sunset and the African Journey

Image
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.
Post a Comment
Read more

When The Sun Goes Down

Image
  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.
Post a Comment
Read more

Ọmọrohun: The becoming of stone

Image
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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Can Wisdom Live in a Bad Person? ~ An AI Reflection

Image
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 ...
1 comment
Read more

Valley of the Setting Sun (Sunset Series)

Image
Valley of the Setting Sun was painted in a quiet moment of reflection, when the day begins to withdraw and light lingers just long enough to be felt. The enclosing dark forms suggest a valley, both physical and emotional, while the glowing horizon and its reflection speak of continuity, memory, and hope. Sunset has always been a sacred hour for me: a time of pause, gratitude, and gentle reckoning. In this work, the valley becomes a place of stillness where light does not disappear abruptly but settles slowly, inviting contemplation. It is neither the end of the day nor the arrival of night, but the space in between where life breathes softly and meaning reveals itself.
Post a Comment
Read more

Horizons Woven

Image
Over the next six months, I will be working on my most ambitious painting project to date.  The work involves sewing together fragments of multiple paintings, each originally created on loose, unstretched acrylic canvas, into a single monumental piece on linen, measuring approximately 9ft by 9ft. The central theme is sunset over sea, land, and sky. The individual paintings will vary in size, texture, and depth, allowing contrasts and conversations to emerge across the surface. I see this project as the creation of a stitched field of memories: distinct moments, moods, and spaces from past works brought together into one expansive, living composition. Driven by my long-standing interest in openness, space, and light, this work is conceived on a scale that invites immersion. It is intended for display in a large hallway, gallery, or exhibition hall, where viewers can stand before it and experience not just a painting, but a landscape shaped by time, movement, and refle...
Post a Comment
Read more