submitted on Sat, 11/17/2007 - 12:38 in Shola Akintonwa Niche by justoneadmin 
A story in every stroke
For
modern contemporary artist Shola Akintonwa, paintings are an emotional
story-telling experience. Rajeev Nair met her in Dubai, where she hosts
her first exhibition in the Middle East at ArtSpace gallery
Photographs: Chandra Balan
That
Shola Akintonwa narrates a story in every painting couldn't have been
accidental. A Nigerian, who grew up in London, she discovered the
essence of painting in the story-telling tradition that marks African
art.
The rest of her life, she says, has been a series of happy
coincidences... (even her first exhibition in the Middle East, now on,
at the Artspace Gallery in Dubai. It was a series of incidental
meetings with people, one leading to the other.)
She recalls
drifting through her formative years in London. She ran a model agency
fully aware that it wasn't what she ought to be doing.
She was
always into colours but not art per se, and eventually discovered her
strengths through her association with a formidable trio: Her former
boyfriend Simon, a singer with an Irish band; and his friends, Bono of
U2 and Guggi Rowan, "a fantastic Irish artist."
An untrained artist,
Rowan was the first to convince Shola that she could paint. And so she
tapped into interesting emotional experiences from her own life. "Those
were things common to women, things that happen to them, no matter
where they come from," she recalls.
Her first piece was purely
instinctive and totally unrestrained. She had no audience to play to,
none to impress, and she simply hung her painting on her living room
wall, unsigned.
The responses encouraged her; so did the £2,000,
it fetched in less than two weeks. "I was very charged," says Shola. "I
can't believe that people are allowing to me to make this (art), which
I love so much, my profession."
However, she says the influence of
the threesome in her life has been formidable. "I am awed by the fact
that these three people came from nowhere and they are all accomplished
in different ways, being the most excellent in their kind of work."
Following
her first painting, some ten years back, she returned to Nigeria. "I
examined the paintings, the pigments, the carvings, and realised that
in everything they do, there is a story. Art in Nigeria is a very
living thing, not something you do to be bought or sold for the living
room," she says.
Shola took that learning back to London and
subsequently integrated that with her learning on the chemistry of
painting, of mixing various media.
For the last five years, she has
been living in Rome, opting for the more relaxed Italian lifestyle than
the hectic UK one. The artist in her too demanded the shift. "I like to
use natural daylight. In London, half the year, I do not see natural
light," she says.
Shola says an African influence — "the fact that
there is always a story" — in her works is rather sub-conscious. "If
you look hard enough, you could interpret the story, perhaps more
related to women. Even in the abstract pieces, there is a very
meditative thread."
Her primary palette comprises red, black and
white. "Red is strong, makes people happy; white is clean, pure and
just so right; and black, mostly as a tool, a background," she explains
the logic.
An instinctive artist and human being, Shola paints
what she feels and sees, often starting without any idea. "Whatever I
have got in life and painting, has been through my instincts. And often
what I paint, comes out as an inner feeling with a story."
Shola
says she realises that she is an African, a black woman, wherever she
is. "It isn't a negative thing. It is part of my identity. And this
thinking never leaves you, and it perhaps reflects in the paintings
too."
She combines a variety of textures with oil to create a sort
of three-dimensional feel to her works. "A blind person can actually
feel the contours of the paintings," she adds.
Sure enough, for Shola, art is to be seen, experienced and lived. After all, aren't her paintings stories from within?
