Art x Adẹ

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 ...

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.

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...

"Duality in a Single Breath I & II" is a paired work that explores the coexistence of opposing states within a single moment of awareness. Though presented as two separate paintings, they are conceived as one continuous experience much like a breath that holds both inhale and exhale, tension and release. The upper and lower spaces within the compositions reflect contrasting energies: movement and stillness, uncertainty and calm, emergence and retreat. Colour and form are used instinctively rather than symbolically, allowing emotion to lead structure. A subtle horizon becomes a point of transition rather than division, suggesting that boundaries in life are often thresholds rather than endings. This series reflects the artist’s belief that dualities are not contradictions but essential companions. Light does not exist without darkness; silence gains meaning through sound. The works invite the viewer to pause, to breathe, and to recognise the fragile balance ...

Parting with two of my favourite abstract paintings yesterday felt less like a transaction and more like a quiet rite of passage. Each painting carries not just colour and form, but time, memory, and emotion. It began simply, almost casually, with a post on my neighbourhood platform, Nextdoor, asking whether I was selling my work. My reply was a single word: “Yes.” Yet behind that word lay years of seeing, feeling, and becoming. The next message arrived as an image of three of my favourite paintings, one of which had already found a home long ago. Seeing them grouped together again felt like memory folding in on itself. It wa a reminder that art never truly leaves us, even when it has moved on. We arranged to meet on Friday at the local library, a place that already holds echoes of my past exhibitions. It seemed appropriate that such a moment would unfold there, surrounded by stories, silence, and accumulated thought. When the exchange was completed, I realised ...

This abstract composition explores the silent tension between opposing states of existence: day and night, light and dark, movement and stillness, hope and uncertainty. This echoes ancient Chinese philosophy of yin and yang. The upper space is alive with shifting colours and restless energy, evoking the unpredictability of thought, memory, and becoming. Below, darkness settles into a deep, almost cosmic stillness, suggesting the weight of time, silence, and the unknown. A thin red horizon cuts across the canvas like a boundary that cannot be crossed without consequence. It is both a division and a connection, marking the fragile threshold where transformation occurs. Nearby, a solitary white orb hovers, neither triumphant nor defeated, reminding us that meaning often resides not in resolution, but in balance. This painting does not ask the viewer to choose a side. It is an invitation for reflection on the truth that life is lived perpetually between opposites and that wi...

I’m pleased to share that my memoir is now available in a limited number of copies. The book is a collection of short personal stories drawn from my life, touching on family, education, and lived experiences. Rather than offering it for sale, I have chosen to use this memoir to support the work of the Matthew Adekunle Medupin Foundation, an initiative committed to assisting orphans, widows, and people living with sickle cell disease in my local community in Nigeria. Anyone who wishes to support this cause will receive a copy of the memoir as a token of appreciation for their donation. The suggested minimum donation is £20 (or ₦20,000), though those who wish to give more are warmly welcome. Due to logistical reasons, only a very limited number of copies are currently available, and these are located in Abuja and London. If you are interested in supporting this effort or would like more information, please feel free to contact me.

Human life is not shaped only by events, but by passages. These are moments when time alters direction without announcement. This work reflects such a passage. Through the slow accumulation of horizontal layers, the painting mirrors the way existence is formed: not in singular gestures, but in repetition, endurance, and quiet persistence. Each layer carries the weight of what came before it. The central divide is not a rupture, but a threshold, a line where becoming continues under a different condition. What lies on either side is not contradiction, but continuity, shaped by change. This painting does not seek resolution. It accepts division as an essential structure of being, and silence as one of time’s most truthful expressions.

These are two separate but identical paintings  both reflecting the ancient truth that what exists above is inseparable from what lies below. The sky and the river, divided by a dark horizontal line, are not opposites but companions each defining the other. At the centre stands a solitary tree, rooted at the boundary between worlds. Its form belongs to the visible realm, yet its shadow descends into the water, suggesting that no existence is complete without reflection. What we see is only half the story; the unseen carries equal weight. The river does not imitate the sky but it absorbs it. In doing so, certainty dissolves into movement, and form becomes thought. The two identical paintings speak to balance, to the quiet symmetry of life, where every action casts a consequence, and every presence leaves an imprint. “As Above, So Below” is an invitation to stillness and contemplation, reminding us that the external world and the inner life mirror one anothe...

This abstract painting was born at the moment when light loosens its hold on the universe and space begins to speak more loudly than form. The sunset, for me, is not merely the end of a day; it is a meeting point between the visible and the unseen. The sky opens itself, not to be explained, but to be felt. There is no fixed horizon here but only the expression of vastness, freedom, and quiet surrender. My relationship with nature was shaped early in life, in open landscapes where the sky was never distant and silence was never empty. Those memories remain alive in my work. They return each time I paint a sunset, reminding me that space is not absence or void but presence, marking an invitation to breathe, to reflect, and to remember our smallness without fear. This work speaks of transition: from noise to stillness, from certainty to mystery, from what is seen to what is sensed. It is in this in-between space that I find meaning. Life, like the sunset, does not end abrupt...

"Standing Alone" reflects the quiet condition of existence. The painting speaks of the moment when one finds oneself rooted in time, exposed to the vastness around, yet compelled to remain upright. The tree stands not in defiance, but in acceptance: shaped by unseen forces, weathered by passing seasons, and sustained by roots that draw meaning and strength from depths far beyond sight. This work speaks to the solitude that is inseparable from consciousness. No matter how crowded the world becomes, each life must confront its own questions, choices, and silences alone. Yet solitude here is not abandonment or rejection; it is presence. To stand alone is to endure, to witness, and to remain faithful to one’s place in the unfolding order of life. The open space surrounding the tree is as important as the tree itself. It suggests freedom, uncertainty, and possibility. It is a reminder that meaning is not imposed from without but discovered within stillness. In standi...

This sunset is a sacred pause marking a moment appointed by God where time bows and seasons change. As one year closes and another is called forth, the descending sun bears witness to the faithfulness of the Creator, who declares that “the evening and the morning” are held in His hands. The fading light does not speak of loss, but of trust: that what God completes in one season, He renews in the next. Painted at the threshold of 2026, this work reflects a prayerful surrender and a show of gratitude for the days past and quiet confidence in the days ahead. Beneath the open sky, the light withdraws only to return again, affirming the eternal promise that God makes all things new.