Orlu Prince Ozange comes from a background that has always helped his visual art to thrive. Based in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, where he has his studio, his paintings often come out in bold strokes and outlines, often making people tease him thus: “You always make your paintings match your huge size! To which he would smile and enthuse, ‘yes, this may be so’. In an interview with The Nation during his last exhibition in Lagos recently, Orlu revealed a lot about his works, why he is so fond of Duke Asidere, one of the masters who helped his art to grow and become distinctive.
He simply said, ‘Duke is a great artist and learning a lot from him after my training at the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers, helped me to hone my art. But then the University of Port Harcourt is a school where I learnt to be a bold artist, depicting issues, themes and scenarios with bold strokes. But here today, what I have are still my usual art. I have not deviated from my style and form. I look at issues from different angles, using deep colours to depict my works.
Yet, one could notice new themes in Orlu’s works as against his previous ones. “Oh, yes, I actually came up with a new theme this time around, even though the style has not changed”, he admitted with a little smile on his face. “At times you just go back to your past life; think about it and try to express some of it on canvas. You can see plenty of that retrospective approach boldly enmeshed in some of the works on display here. Now, I look at where I am coming from and where I am going. It helps my works to grow, to mature from stage to stage… You can see that the title of this exhibition is aptly so – imaginativeness. That means imagining from the known to unknown. It can also symbolize my cursory look into the past and using some of those elements of the past to justify today and tomorrow”, he postulated.
A lover of colours and someone who uses his works to explore environmental degradation, Orlu also believes that visual arts can be used to draw attention to the pollutions that have bedeviled the Niger Delta areas of Nigeria over the years. “From my works here, you can see also how much of that that I represented, some are imaginations while others represent the true realities of our time”.
Orlu shows his works as often as he can. In the past three years or so, he has participated in three group exhibitions, that in itself demonstrates some level of commitment and dexterity. “Yes, in the past three years I have been involved in three exhibitions. The last one was at the Thought Pyramid last year, with a group of other artists. It was a good outing indeed and that has encouraged me to do more for this show. But henceforth I’d like to be having at least two exhibitions every year. I am still a young artist and this is the moment for me to build myself career wise”, he said.
He quoted the bible to justify his instinct to work harder now – the bible says the youth should work hard with their youthful energy. This is why I work round the clock to produce quality and beautiful works of art. This is a way of paving my way up. A time will come when I will now relax a bit. All these works, you never can tell which one will give you the greatest breakthrough in future”.
It is with this commitment that he also concentrates more on big paintings which expose his subject-matters clearer and more explicitly. He said: “I do mixed media. I also derive my ideas from my engineering background. I use calcium carbonate, I use oil on canvas, I also use acrylic to explore my media. At times I use charcoal and pastel to depict my themes.
Whenever he looks at his works, Orlu would exclaim ‘Oh wow, this is great’. But who does he have to make such an exclamation? “Yes, it gives me a new feeling entirely. But my work does not and there. It goes on and on. Whatever I do indeed creates an avenue for more things that give me avenue to do more and then I go on and on. That is the satisfaction I get from my work. This is why I regard myself as a mobile artist. I travel a lot to learn, to mix, to exhibit and to explore. But Port Harcourt is my base”, he stated, moving around to point to some of his works on the wall.
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