In an ongoing art exhibition in Lagos titled Wooden Cloth, Seye Morakinyo, a multi-faceted and multi-colourist artist who dwells more on collage and acrylic techniques, shows how the colours embedded around flowers and fishes can have therapeutic effects on the socio-economic wellbeing of people. He speaks to Edozie Udeze on this and more.
Seye Morakinyo is a fine artist trained at the Auchi Polytechnic, Edo State. Based in Lagos, he owns and runs a private studio where he devotes most of his time using fictional and non-fictional images around him to perfect his works. He is involved in an ongoing art exhibition at the Alexis Galleries, Lagos, titled Wooden Cloth in which he devolves his works within the realm of collages, pebbles which equally define more profoundly his meticulous linear expressions.
In this encounter with The Nation, Morakinyo defines what informs his form, technique and media. “Since I gradated from Auchi in 2005, I have been in this profession, giving it the best I can”, Morakinyo began, with a fond twist in his voice. “Actually it had not been my dream to be a full time studio artist. I thought of being employed to work in a corporate organization or an agency. But at a time when the job did not come, I decided to venture into a full time studio works. Before I knew it, I got to this stage, and I’ve been enjoying it. So, I have been in it up to this time. But beyond the monetary value of it, painting has been part of me. Now, I work in all the mediums. I work in acrylic; I work in oil. I also do pencil drawing. Initially, I was more at home with pencil”, he said.
However, as time went on, Morakinyo pushed himself harder. “Soon enough”, he volunteered, “I migrated to colour like oil. However, at times oil becomes too choking especially when you are in a confined environment. Then I also ventured into acrylic. From acrylic, I tried collage. Collage has its own fabrics with original colours of fabrics to form your collage works. I like the way fabrics communicate, in terms of colours, in terms of messages embedded in it. So, it is easy to have titles that are philosophical. I then use symbols like fishes, human figures like faces and so on to demonstrate the face of the world”.
For Morakinyo, art has to be done to represent the earth; its myriad of issues. “I use faces in order to represent the emotional feelings of the people. Most of our body languages are communicated through the face. If a man is happy it can only be reflected through the reflexes on his face. If you are moody, the face shows it. So, this is why I mostly use faces to depict the human figure, to showcase what the world itself has for us all”.
He also delves into floras and faunas, those natural environmental issues that help to nurture the face of the earth. He said, “The flowers are there. The idea is that flowers have strong messages emotionally. When you cannot complete your messages in words, you convey them through the flowers and the colourful issues they represent. When this is done it shows nature at its best. You have rose flowers representing purity. You also have red flowers which stand for love. If you talk of every aspect of life, flowers represent them all. You can also use flowers to handle health and emotional problems confronting man. When you see flowers, the pains in your heart will ebb. Therefore I have to show that flowers are relevant in our lives, in our day-to-day dealings with one another. Even in our culture we often prefer to have money than have flowers. But that does not remove the fact that flowers depict love, life, beauty, and such wonderful things of life”.
As an artist, Morakinyo believes he can change the orientation of Nigerians towards flowers. “Yes, it can be done”, he promised. “People through some of my works may one day realize that love around flowers shows the beauty of life, if you are falling in love with someone and he gives you flower try to appreciate it”.
As a global village in which the world is fast turning into, Morakinyo feels that soon, this part of the world will come to terms with a deeper realization of what flowers stand for. “We are becoming one family. Let those issues of nature define us and show us that art is part of recreation. For him, every artist is a novelist. “Yet not all novelists are artists per se. Either in a fictional or non-factional form, as an artist, you are a caravan taking over your views on a literary journey”, he said. So petals of life, the total embodiment of love, colourful collages on canvas in different measures and sizes define Morakinyo’s recourse to arts. He opines that there must be a point of convergence in all human endearvours. “From the angle I am talking about, you can see that flowers can indeed be a point of convergence for all humankind. In terms of the health values of flowers, it is imperative to see the need to have recourse to them. There are also herbs done from flowers”, he stated.
In the beauty of his works Morakinyo makes nature a therapeutic form of life. He sees the work of nature as sequel to human existence. Those deeper colours in their multi-faceted layers give colourful meanings to the art of collage. They are like bouquets of life on which the clear messages of destiny hinge. They have indelible marks of power over life; over those decisions which either hinder or propel man towards his goals, his aspirations, and all.
His argument is cogent. “If you build houses everywhere and there is no beauty; no natural beauty around those houses, there are no aesthetic values”, he presented. “So we also need plenty of oxygen. Yes, they all come from flowers, faunas and nature generally. Therefore the whole essence of my works is to go into these areas to draw people’s attention to nature, to the inherent values of what they stand for in our lives”.
In the past, Morakinyo had contacts with Nike Okundaye in her gallery in Lagos. There are some resemblances of her style in his works. He admits somewhat of this scenario and says, ‘Yes, I worked with Nike Okundaye in the past, but that may have influenced me in one way or the other. Then I used to send her my works and she’d buy. That was part of the contact I had with her. But I am not attached to her works. She does pencil linear works mainly. But may be directly or indirectly I may have been influenced because artists are influenced by what they see around them. What comes out of us is what garbage in and what garbage out. That’s what makes us artists; what makes us who we are”, he said.
Even though he has been a multi-colourist artist, Morakinyo still believes that the more the colour in an art work; the heavier the effects on the public. “Auchi Poly opened us to diverse colours. You achieve greater effects when the colours are diverse and multi-faceted. In Auchi we do not work in black colours. It is out of it completely. So, we know Auchi to be a great colourist school and that helped me to be a lover of multiple colours. It is because of this that we exhibit all sorts of colours in our works. This is what has influenced my sense of colours over the years”.
As a multifaceted artist, he dwells in acrylic, on oil on canvas, collage and more. These have helped him to conquer new grounds and moved on ahead of others. He said. “It depends on my emotion. Therefore I do not concentrate on only collage per se. I am multi-faceted; I am dynamic. I explore other aspects of art like fabrics. I do not want to be bored by only one form. No, this is not good for me as an artist”, he said.