This body of work is my poetry of imagination—an emotional and visual language expressed through symbols, motifs, patterns, and colour. Rather than focusing on literal interpretations, I am drawn to the aesthetics of these elements: how they relate, how they flow, and how they speak silently to one another on the canvas. For me, beauty often lives in suggestion rather than explanation. The paintings are not meant to be read in a fixed way, but felt, experienced, and absorbed through their visual rhythm.
I am often inspired by working on a white background. White gives me space—an open field where colours can breathe, lines can wander freely, and shapes can exist without restriction. It brings a sense of clarity, simplicity, and elegance to the work. At times, I feel the urge to create all my paintings on white, drawn by its quiet strength and openness. Yet my love for experimentation always pulls me in new directions. Colour tempts me constantly, urging me to explore other hues and atmospheres. This balance allows my audience to experience my ideas across diverse tonal environments, each offering a different emotional entry point into the work.
This mixed media body of work is titled Cultural Sensation. Created with lace fabrics and acrylic on canvas, the paintings measure 54 by 54 inches and 52 by 52 inches. Each piece explores a stylized head constructed from symbols, motifs, and patterns inspired by both my imagination and my African cultural society. The heads function as vessels—carriers of memory, identity, and collective consciousness—layered with visual codes that blend the personal and the cultural.
A defining feature in each painting is the presence of earrings shaped like royal swords or sceptres known as Ada and Eben. These are significant symbols within Benin culture, traditionally associated with the Oba of Benin. They represent power, authority, and sovereignty, and are carried by men and boys known as Omuada, the official sceptre bearers to the monarch. By placing these symbols as earrings, I re-imagine them as adornments of identity—both decorative and deeply symbolic.
Cultural Sensation is my emotional response to African heritage, tradition, and visual memory. It is a celebration of culture not as something distant or static, but as a living, evolving force that continues to shape how I see, feel, and create. Through these works, I invite viewers to engage with culture through sensation—through colour, form, texture, and imagination—rather than through explanation alone.
