Tayo Adenaike… The Return Of The Watercolourist

He exhibited last in Nigeria over 20 years ago. But the Enugu-based watercolourist, Tayo Adenaike who holds a Master of Fine Art degree in Painting from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1982 had traversed major art centres in the United States, England and Germany with artistic expressions that evolved as a result of his own visual idiom and mastery of watercolour technique. In the last couples of weeks, Adenaike has been busy with his ‘brush on canvas’ churning out paintings for the exhibition: Akalaka: Lines of Destiny, which opens tomorrow (Monday, April 20) at Wheatbaker Hotel, Ikoyi, Lagos. In this encounter with KABIR ALABI GARBA, Adenaike spoke on the significance of the joint-show featuring another Enugu-based artist, Dr. Obiora Anidi; his artistic exploits overseas; how the Life In My City Art Festival (LIMCAF) replaced Aka Group of Artists that laid the foundation for artistic professionalism in the Eastern Nigeria in the 1980s; why he has not be able to pass on, to younger ones, knowledge, experience and skill acquired through rigorous experimentations among other issues. Excerpts:

WHAT are the major themes addressed by your works in the exhibition, Akalaka: Lines of Destiny? I am basically a painter of faces, and the body of work that will be on show ranges from 2006 to 2015. There are different themes, but basically all revolving around the human face; the expression on the human face, the joy on the human face, the sadness on the human face, there is a religious aspect too, I think there is one painting I titled Our Hope Lies in the Begotten Son, which has to do with my Christian upbringing. There are quite a few paintings to see.

What informed the choice of the month of April for the show? Initially, I was thinking it was going to be a solo show for me, until Mrs. Sandra Obiago, the curator came up with the idea of making it a joint one, not because there wasn’t enough work to show, but because she felt maybe her clients might react to a joint show better.

More importantly, while we were discussing the show, it was initially scheduled for March, but I told her to move it to April because my birthday is on the 27th of April, but we didn’t realize that there was going to be a shift in the election date, and that it was going to stretch that far.

Nothing specific about April as the date, it was just on an emotional level, but that aside, there is something that is more important that one can talk about.

This show is more like a home-coming for me. I have not exhibited in this country in the past 20 years, so this is more like coming back home to see what home is like and what home has to offer me.

After exhibiting for so long overseas, what should the art audience expect from you in this forth-coming exhibition? They should be able to see some elements of maturity I hope. In the life of every artist, you have the formative, the mature; and the period of stagnation, and then you probably stop working.

There are three stages basically, it’s more like learning to crawl, then you walk and you start running, then you can’t do more than run, that is just the way it is, you don’t have wings, and because you don’t have wings you can’t fly either; walking stick perhaps comes into one’s life as an object of support.

The colours are stronger, the themes are more direct, and generally, there is more mastery in the handling of the medium, and a lot of experimentation which of course over the years one has been trying to improve upon, now come into play.

I hope people who saw my paintings in the late 80s will be pleasantly surprised, but I know that the colours are a lot stronger, it is not just watercolour as most people know it to be in western art.

I have tried to use the medium quite differently. May be I should let the viewing public say so, but I know that my work has changed a lot. Can we say that the maturity, the experience and stay outside the country have defined the change in your delivery over time? The artist is always learning.

If you an artist, everyday, you keep learning, you keep experimenting, you keep imbibing, and you keep discarding ideas in order to achieve what one will call a near ‘perfect handwriting’.

I will not say that going abroad did not expose me to other art disciplines, it did. It exposed me to western art, and of course, art for me is art, be it Western, African or Malaysian, there is something unifying about works produced in all these parts that tells you this is art. That which I see as great art is that which I cannot produce, but I can admire and learn from.

What amazes and attracts me in other people’s work I see, is when I tell myself that ‘Tayo… you would not have been able to do this or even think of it, but there is something you need to learn from it.’ That which I cannot do, I respect.

But that which I think I can handle very easily, has little or no space in my heart. No human being has an exclusive right to knowledge, I believe in that; it’s the same thing with art. It is possible for you to see the work of a six year old, and get stunned. And if it leaves you extremely speechless, you learn from it.

That is the way I have tried to sharpen my creative skill and develop my art. The AKA Group’s activities were well known in the country, particularly in Lagos in the past, but why has AKA in the last 10 years appeared to have faded out? It is unfortunate; there is something you must note about artists, it is more like every artist is an island to himself, artists are very individualistic.

It’s a surprise to me that the AKA group was able to stay together for the period of time it kept exhibiting. Basically we are all individuals. And I know that part of what happened was that Obiora Udechukwu had suggested that we were all getting busier, but more in the sense that we were now getting more involved with different things, and that there was the need to bring in younger ones for continuity sake.

Some people said no, and when it was time to apportion assignments to those original members of the AKA group, you would see them not being able to deliver.

Some even submitted their works late for exhibition openings. There was always one problem or the other in handling assignments. That is the individuality that you see in human beings, it was not as if, if the work was sold, Mr. B was going to share part of my money, no, a certain percentage of the sales go into the AKA purse, but some people were beginning to say, I sold more so, why is this person who didn’t sell going to benefit from my sale? There was an attempt by somebody to try to resuscitate AKA, but I think it didn’t see the light of day.

And I think at some point we tried to bring in the younger ones to hold an exhibition, but it didn’t work. I was in support of admitting younger ones. If AKA was still in existence, today, it would have been difficult for me as an individual to participate in the group fully like I did many years back. I am faced with very tight schedules, travelling and meeting with my clients.

I paint at night, how then would you expect me to have the time to design things for AKA? Most of the designs then, I did with Obiora Udechukwu. You give people assignments they won’t do it, let us get in younger hands, they say no, that was it. One notable thing about AKA then was its artistic professionalism, certainly the non-existence of AKA would have affected that, what is your view on this? In trying to put AKA together, there was something that was central.

Whenever there was a show, you had to bring out your ‘bottom box’, it had to be something very original, something new, and something good, and we had a way of saying ‘look, I think this is better or that is better or this is not as good’. It was freedom of thoughts, and we criticized in-house before we showed the works outside. Obiora would probably say, ‘Tayo I think this is stronger than that and I look at the work and I am in a position to say, Sir, I think this one will go better’.

At a point in time we were working closely as friends, and there was a year we were thinking of coming up with a central theme for Aka show. There was that freedom of expression, which was inherent in everybody, the way I paint is not the way Mr. B paints, but we can still look at something that was done by Mr. B and say, ‘this is good or this is not good or this is sub-standard.’

That was why AKA had set-standards, the outings were never shabby outings, it had to be good, if not, forget it, it won’t go. It was not as if we were in a school where the teacher would say, ‘you either do it my way or forget it,’ I mean, because we were friends and we had the opportunity of seeing whatever the other man was going to present, there was always this dialogue between at least, two people before every exhibition.

In their effort to promote watercolour painting, the likes of Lekan Onabanjo, Sam Ovraiti and others formed Watercolour Society of Nigeria few years ago.

This perhaps confirmed the need to rescue the medium from extinction among Nigerian artists. Do you think more young Nigerian artists still embrace watercolour today? I’m hearing of Watercolour Society of Nigeria for the first time. I am frank about this. I know Sam Ovraiti, he is a good friend of mine, I don’t know the other people in the society.

However, I was not informed about the society coming into existence but it doesn’t really matter, it is good if they have something like that. The truth is this, watercolour as a painter’s medium is very difficult to handle.

It is for you to imagine painting with water, how do you control it? How do you get the straight lines? The tactile quality of oil, acrylic, and the oily or chalky nature of pastel can avail you the opportunity to get straight lines, but how do you control water to get a straight line? This is just to give you an insight into how difficult watercolour as a painting medium is.

People run away from it. But for me, while I was in school, I kept telling myself that ‘it is the area where you don’t see many people that you should go into’. I painted and experimented with oils, acrylic, pastels and gouache, but seeing that my classmates were not close to watercolour, I decided to go into it, and that has been the only medium that I have used in so many years. It was only in 1995 that I went back to acrylic, which culminated in an exhibition in Seattle, Washington.

Since then, it has been watercolour all the way. It’s more like a magnet that attracts me. It is a very difficult medium to handle, do a check amongst Nigerian artists. How many are into watercolour? Only very few! How are you transferring that knowledge to younger ones? It’s unfortunate that I’m not a teacher, and unfortunate too that what I do is not everyday painting.

I am basically a graphic designer. That is the profession I hold onto for a living. I design magazines, books, journals, using computer and predominantly CorelDraw software. If I was teaching in a school, maybe I would have been in a position to encourage younger ones to learn how to use watercolour, but unfortunately I’m not.

It’s more like knowing that what you know will one day die with you. I think of it at times and it hurts me. I’d rather not talk about this anymore. Life In My City Art Festival (LIMCAF) has been around since 2007, luckily you are on the Board of Directors, what has been the impact of LIMCAF especially in the area of art appreciation in this part of the world? The east has quite a lot to show in terms of arts and culture. Put differently, in Igboland, there is so much art.

From wall painting to sculpture, stone carving, ceramics, Igbo-ukwu pottery and the rest of them. Life in my city event takes place within Enugu. I want to think it has replaced what AKA used to be.

I have forgotten how many of us were in AKA, but the number of people who participate in Life in my city is a lot more, and they still keep the art scene within Enugu alive on a yearly basis.

Now that AKA is no longer there, happily, people can turn around and say, there is an alternative, and that alternative is Life in my city, and when you look at the displays, there was nothing like photography in AKA exhibition. Photography is key in Life in my city exhibition.

Photography has always been one of the disciplines of Fine and Applied Arts, but Life in my city is taking it a step further, and you now see people who are very interested in photography unlike in the past, and that is good for the society.

What message are you trying to assert with the Photo Africa competition that you are the sole sponsor? I have a commercial photo studio, with about ten workers, they earn their living from the unit and I don’t interfere with what they do. My graphic design job occasionally gives me the opportunity to take photographs, and I studied photography in the university – basic photography, not at the degree level, which I did for two years, I have not forgotten what I learnt.

Now, that the world is going digital, it makes taking photographs a lot easier and more pleasurable. I shoot most of the images I use in working for my clients, apart from calendar shots which I occasionally buy from other people. I’m sponsoring it (Photo Africa competition) to make sure that it doesn’t die.

I do not want the photography aspect of LIMCAF to die. Every time I go around and see what they are exhibiting, I feel very happy, people from all over Africa exhibit in Enugu every year. When I see various themes and techniques, I am enthused. With the present digitization going on, how will you describe the integration, people absorbing new things? There is something that man doesn’t like, that thing is change, and if there is something that is inevitable, it is also change; it is as perennial as the grass, there must always be change.

But as human beings, we will always rebuff it, let’s be honest to ourselves, there are some people who up till today cannot press the keyboard of a computer.

Make projections, ask yourself the question ‘in ten years, where will those people be’? Take a look at our banks, I tell my friends in banks that when you go abroad and you go to a normal banking hall, you hardly ever see more than 6 or 7 people, and they do more than what 30 or 40 people do here daily, plus the introduction of ATM card.

With the introduction of ATM card, certain people will lose their jobs, very soon, people can handle their banking on their phones, so of what use are the multitudes you see in our banking halls? They will resist it, but they will accept it sooner than later because there is nothing they can do about it, that is the way of the world. From printing black and white images and using some dyes to paint on it, so that it looks like real colour, today, you just shoot and everything is in vivid colour.

Those who know photography will still tell you though that they believe in black and white images as true photography and real art. When you shoot in black and white negative and you are able to print and see from 1 per cent black to a 100 per cent black, that is photography; when you are able to see the grey tones, starting from 1 to 100, that is photography. With digital cameras, you can shoot in RGB and convert to black and white or CMYK colour or Sepia.

At the end of the day, you will still tell yourself that a good photograph is the handiwork of the man behind the camera. Black and white is top- of-the-line photography for me. Black and white is awesome! Everyone has a digital camera today. You cannot claim to be a professional photographer if you don’t own one.

Fifteen years ago, it was all about Rolliflex and twin lens cameras. Talk about change and absorbing new ideas. What is your view on the appreciation of arts generally in Nigeria? It has improved. I know that when I was in the university there were just a few art schools in Nigeria and that at the time I was leaving we had about 36 art schools.

I think the number must have increased to between 70 and 80 now. If we have 70 to 80 art schools, then it means art appreciation is on the increase. What about the delivery, in terms of quality of the outputs? That is another thing, and sadly I need to talk about this. There is something that is going on in our universities, people are scampering to get Ph.D Painting degrees.

I find it absurd, I think it’s stupid because quality is more or less beginning to suffer. People are more interested in having the title (Dr.) in front of their names, as opposed to being committed to real studio work. That is what I’m beginning to notice and I hear the NUC has a hand in it.

I was discussing with Obiora Udechukwu not too long ago and he was saying that somebody just finished his Ph.D in Painting and I told myself, ‘are you going to paint what the camera cannot capture or what? Who is going to assess you’? So, what is the purpose of Master in Fine Arts (MFA) degree? Anywhere in the world, MFA is the terminal degree for studio courses, as opposed to Master of Arts in History; Master of Arts in Education and Master of Arts in Ceramics, which have to do with the theoretical aspects of art.

It’s amazing what is going on in Nigeria, I find it very funny.

I am not trying to denigrate or castigate anybody. I am not going back to school and I’m not saying those who want to go and get Ph.D in Ceramics should not do so, but the question I’m asking is, what are they going to produce that somebody who has an MFA won’t be able to produce? I think the people who came up with the idea that you must have a doctorate degree to be able to lecture in Nigerian universities as it pertains to studio art courses should have a rethink. Something is fundamentally wrong in their thinking.

My lecturers, how many of them had MFA? But they were good, and anywhere you dropped their names in the world of art, people duffed their hats in accolade.

I feel sad that people need to get Ph.D to become professors. It is going to kill standard and quality. It doesn’t make sense, you are thinking of the academic aspect at the expense of the technical aspect.

So, what are you going to teach the students? If you are telling me somebody has a Ph.D in Art History it is acceptable; but Ph.D Painting, Ceramics and Textile Design, it is a bit awkward.

The people who are clamouring for this are people who are not creative, skillful or gifted, and unfortunately, the people who are supposed to look into this and say this is not good for Nigerian universities are themselves half-baked and clueless. It is a major unfortunate occurrence, and I don’t know how we are going to escape it.

It is so sad that the quality of art will continue to drop. I foresee a future where people instead of sharpening their skills will be reading in order to become professors. Reading will certainly take over from creativity.