Quite early in his promising career, the visual arts and music have remained complementary passions for Moses Oyeleye. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke reports
ENCOUNTER
Isn’t it rather curious that Moses Oyeleye – a. k. a. Leye Moses – now blames it all on “No Gray”? Yeah, perhaps this song, which was written and performed by the American gospel, R ’n B singer Jonathan McReynolds, should take the blame for the virtual neglect of his promising studio practice.
It was in 2017 when the University of Lagos graduate first heard the song, which was released in 2012 as one of the songs in McReynolds’ Life Music album. This was thanks to a friend, who knew about his passion for the R ’n B musical genre.
“I learnt the song and would sing the lyrics as if I owned them,” Moses says. Indeed, some of his friends, who neither knew the song nor about McReynolds, actually thought the song was his. “This was when the idea of doing a cover of the song started forming in my head. I got even more motivated to do it when I heard a cover of the song done by Alic (Paco) Walls, who infused a rap verse into his version.”
For Moses, the option left for him was to “Africanise” his version to distinguish it from the original. “Hence, I rewrote the lyrics and spoke to my producer about my idea on the instrumentals and that was how my version came about.”
Talking about the song, it is basically about the human struggle between doing the Will of his Creator and succumbing to his base desires.
Besides music, Moses’ other interest is the visual arts. He is unarguably among the leading artists, who work with ballpoint pen. He started working with the medium from as far back as when he was a Primary Three pupil of the Fresh Myrtle International School in Okota, a mainland neighbourhood of Lagos.
“Back then, I had a jotter in which I would replicate illustrations from textbooks,” he reminisces. “Little did I know that I was sharpening my skill with the medium and it would be my preferred medium years later.”
Much later, when he was about to conclude his studies at the University of Lagos, his proficiency in the medium had grown so much that it surpassed his own expectations of what he thought possible. “It’s been amazing what I’ve been capable of doing with the ballpoint pen between then and now. The first major pieces I did then were the Prime Leadership series, which was done to address issues in the political scene in Nigeria, featuring my colleagues in school.”
Art, for this second child and son of a Kwara State-born couple’s four children, has been a lifelong passion. This was even when, somewhere along the line, music tends to interpolate into this sphere of interest. He traces this complementary passion for music back to his paternal grandparents, who were folk musicians.
So, it is curious that he could blame his recent work on a cover version of “No Gray” for neglecting his visual arts practice. Haven’t the two passions harmoniously coexisted for so long in his career?
An unapologetic adept of representational art, Moses loves paying attention to details. “I’ve always been keener on representing forms for what they are, rather than attempting to stylise them,” he intimates. “Since childhood, most of my drawings have been more of portraits than cartoons. I’d say realism comes from my tendency to be a perfectionist. I love paying attention to details, but my style isn’t hyper-realism though it’s close. My works are seen with vivid layers of cross-hatching ballpoint pen strokes.”
It took his encounter with the late Chinedu Sunday, who was then a student at the Yaba College of Technology to launch himself into a period of artistic tutelage that extended a little beyond his senior secondary years.
It became evident soon after his secondary education that the visual arts and music would dominate his future activities. “For a period of a year and couple of months, before my admission and resumption at the University of Lagos in 2014, I became an apprentice to Jamiu Apewo from 2012 to 2014.”
Thus, studying art at the University of Lagos became a natural sequel to his previous experiences, because – as he puts it – “it was like a DNA imprint that couldn’t be altered”. And that, of course, foreclosed the prospects of any opposition from his parents. “My family knew I wouldn’t trade my passion for art for anything else. They take it as a divine calling, seeing that no one else in the family shares the same interest. If I didn’t study art, I would have studied music. I’m still hoping to get a degree in music though.”
His first big hit came in 2017. This was when he participated in the #DRAWCHURCHILLCHALLENGE, a drawing contest to draw Churchill Olakunle, a businessman and philanthropist. “Ten out of several entries were picked, and the first, second and third place winners were determined by installation likes and comments. I won second place, and was awarded $600.”
Twice – in 2018 and 2019 – he not only participated in the annual Life in My City Art Festival competition but also made it to the grand finale. In 2018, he won the viewers’ choice category award, which was awarded by the Life in My City Art Festival’s artistic director Dr Ayo Adewunmi. Shortly after the 2019 edition of the event, he participated in a three-man exhibition organised by Mbari Uno in the upscale Government Reserved Area Ikeja.
The artist, who prices his ballpoint pen works higher than his works done with pencils, has executed several commissioned works in both mediums. Primarily influenced by the works from the European Renaissance period, he admits admiring some contemporary artists. As for role models in the local art scene, he mentions only two names: Ibe Ananaba and Austin Uzor. “These people’s works are similar in style but they’ve got their uniqueness. Their pen drawings inspire me so much all the time. Though their drawings look sketchy, I love the fact that they allow the viewer to use his or her eyes to fill up the missing blank spaces, which therefore makes them engaging.”
Now that it is settled that art is his life’s calling, he looks forward to the future with optimism. “[Making art] is my full-time business,” he says. “It involves adorning places and rendering artistic services. With the aid of social networking, I see my works going places across the world. What this means is that I have to stay true in this business and stay consistent. Staying consistent is tantamount to how much I’d evolve and how much mastery I’d gain over the medium. The goal is to create works of timeless relevance, bearing in mind that art is still one of the best ways to keep records of important issues in society even for the sake of posterity.”
