At art exhibition titled ‘REFLECTIONS ‘ took place recently at the residence of the Consul-General of the Consulate of Brazil. The artist Eugene Chime-Age presented 50 paintings comprising of four interesting series from 2014 to date.
In series one , the coulourful collection had :SISI-EKO’ which depicted women who come to live in Lagos from other states in Nigeria. They imbibe the culture of adorning themselves and looking gorgeous at all times.
The tribal marks and hair style are also part of the messages in the reflection and it had images from specific states and tribe that the people come from. This includes the
3 straight lines on the cheeks (Egba Land, Ogun State).3 lines across the cheeks (Ile-Ife, Osun State), 1 line on the cheeks (Ondo state) as well as the 3 angular lines by the sides of lips (Tiv, Benue State).
In Series 2, Eugene takes a deep look at the family. Here, the family is a unit that is formed in love and reflects hospitality, friendliness and unity is thus portrayed. Next, the artists goes into something deeper titled intuition in the collection in series 3. In this set of art pieces , lines are used to form the figures and a closer look shows eyes that pop out from each of them. This creatively depicts and emphasizes the fact that women are quick to sense danger from miles away unlike their male counterparts.
The fourth and final set of works is tagged Newspaper collage. Here the newspapers in the figures represent documented history.
For Chime Age, arts interestingly runs in the family. “ I have been painting since I was about 12, and I also discovered that I express myself a lot better when I paint. So, for me, it was the way to go. I sleep and see beautiful scenarios; a few of us could be watching something and I am seeing something completely different from what other people are seeing”
It’s been a journey through the tough and hard road but instead of giving up, the artist put in a lot of hard work and perseverance took him to the next level. “I would paint, take them to be framed, market them, sell them and at the same time monitor sales. It was a herculean task for just one person, and in those days, it wasn’t the practice for every artist to hire a manager. So, it was difficult staying focused in the face of these challenges”.
His loving wife, Sandra Chime Age has also been a wonderful pillar of support. ‘At some point, my wonderful wife took up the responsibility of running the gallery. She left the benefits of a well-paying job behind so that I could face the work of production alone. It made things much easier. She browsed the internet and applied for exhibitions abroad, so in no time, I started to participate in exhibitions both here in Nigeria and abroad. Some galleries here also sold my works, and things generally became much easier”.
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