By Henry Akubuiro 

In recent years, Bukola Orioye’s people of colour themes have been strenghtening the fresh African cultural reawakening among fine artists in recent years.

 Orioye’s paintings revisit the past, celebrate the current and project into the future with colours of hope. The artist’s depth in contemporary painting styles and technique brings freshness in documenting the beauty and virtues of the colour people. 

 Being an artist of natural, self-taught skills, Orioye has quite a number of paintings to express his interest in the on going fresh black renaissance. With Orioye’s brush strokes in the paintings entitled “Seek Within” series and “Black Strive with Pride”, for examples, artistic projection into the future in fashion and lifestyle come alive. In these two paintings, he brings celebrated lifestyle of the past onto canvas to stimulate resilience of the black persons.

  “This body of work goes through every aspect of life,” Orioye says. “We must seek tone-mindfulness in order to understand what we’re able of and how we can achieve it.” The artist, whose works have been exhibited on the international space in the last few years, argues that “The change we seek, the love we ask, and the way we anticipate the world to be, must start with us laboriously working for it.” His Artist Statement is quite instructive and metaphorical: “The thing you ask starts with you. The question is, are you set or are you going to flee?”

 And stressing the beauty and Africanness of his art further, is another painting titled ‘Black Consciousness’, in which he celebrates  African colours. In the painting, Orioye depicts a young lady of sensuous mood. More interesting is the fact that “Black Consciousness” is not the usual celebration of nudity adorning canvases, yet still sensuously appealing.

 Commenting on Orioye’s art, a seniour artist and writer, Charles Okereke, noted that Orioye mind’s quest had progressed to infused questionings and suppositions in his canvases beyond mere rhetorical esthetics (as the trendy atmosphere now seems mostly to suggest). Okereke argued that Orioye’s work speaks in metaphors which flow between the past, the present and the postulation of the future. Orioye, according to Okereke probes on relicts to unearth anchored reasoning which shares semblances with contemporary happenings. 

 “His stylistic sense is inventive of punkish style piles of hair reminiscent of the 80s and discotheques, parted with sharp oblique angles which are reflections of the hard chiseled surfaces of the Yoruba effigies he introduces into his works, seasoned with a strong sense of fashion,” Okereke explained. “Orioye is concerned with African spirituality and how they interface with identity, memories, worships and total wellbeing of the people. This adaptation of the past to interface with the present and postulate a futuristic nuance is evident in his warm leathered clad supersonic subjects whose demeanor echoes the Star Trek, UFO, and intergalactic adour of postmodern Hollywood cinematic periods.”

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 Indeed, Orioye’s works exude metaphor in creative skills. The artist said, for example, that someone’s ability to survive test of life when faced with situations, such as “between the world that speaks the verity in falsehoods and our inner tone that embodies the real verity in chaos,” depended on individuals inner resilience.

  Orioye’s career has taken off on a steady pace, with the unflooding energies of young African artists. He has exhibited his works in such shows as “Portraits” at Ore Ofe Art Gallery, U.K, and “Florescence” at Mitochondria Gallery, Houston. TX, U.S.

  Orioye, born 1993, and raised in the city of Osogbo, Osun State, is a native of Ido-Osi Ekiti State, Southwest, Nigeria. 

 In setting out to pursue a career in  Fine Art, Orioye ran into quite a challenge, which almost ruined his passion as a self-taught artist. But his dream of being artist did not happen until after his first degree in Chemistry.

He had planned to pursue a Master’s degree in Chemistry at the University of Ibadan, in 2019 where his passion for art found a way through. 

 He started with mentorship under under the tutelage of an established professional, Mr Tope Fatunmbi at Topfat Art Gallery, Adamasingba, Ibadan, Oyo State. After being mentored by Fatunmbi, Orioye started his professional practice in 2020. 

 In search for a distinct signature, Orioye’s brushstrokes found interest in societal issues and struggles that life demands. With such themes where he draws inspiration, Orioye expanded his themes to capture the beauty and culture of people of colour with a primary focus on women.

Photo Caption: Seek Within VII (oil and acrylic on canvas, 40 x 40inch, dated 2022), by Bukola Orioye.