Yinka Olatunbosun
Eight leading artists, known for their predilection for the watercolour medium, will feature at the next edition of The Content exhibition at the luxury store, Adam and Eve, GRA, Ikeja. The show which is expected in April is bringing together, for the first time on the mainland, veteran painters. Most of them started their career with this medium. Interestingly too, this medium has become one of the least preferred by painters because of some reasons. One of it being the difficulty in controlling the water colour in painting.
The curator for the exhibition, Lekan Onabanjo revealed that the exhibition is also designed to make collectors of water colours appreciate the true aesthetics of the medium. He added that it is also ironical that a large proportion of artists reside on the mainland and art exhibitions hardly take place there. Adam and Eve which is yet to launch its gallery began The Content series as a build-up to the actual launch.
At a recent press briefing to announce the show, one of the participating artists, Sam Ovraiti remarked that watercolour is one of the finest of art media but most of its materials are imported and quite expensive. For Kehinde Sanwo, another participating artist, there is no room for improvisation in water colour painting if the aim is to achieve good quality painting.
Watercolour painting usually take more hours to complete for every artist because it requires that the painter allow each layer of paint to get dry before applying another. Another challenge with water colour painting is poor sales. Most collectors in Nigeria prefer large pieces of art whereas water colour paintings typically come in miniatures. But for this spring exhibition, collectors should be ready for a different taste of water colour.
Ovraiti revealed that most of his early water colour paintings had been bought by international visitors on their way out of the country. He added that most Nigerian collectors are more concerned about the size of the work than the actual effort and cost of production of the art pieces.
The full list of the participating artists and the number of works will be revealed on a later date.
