Pain and pride in Ogboro’s arts

From this unique establishment, Mr. Ogboro has been supporting his family of five and has even educated one of his daughters to advance level. But the artist, who hails from Delta State, tells Sunday Trust, he never went to any school to learn his craft. It was something that came from God, he said. “God […]

From this unique establishment, Mr. Ogboro has been supporting his family of five and has even educated one of his daughters to advance level. But the artist, who hails from Delta State, tells Sunday Trust, he never went to any school to learn his craft. It was something that came from God, he said.

“God is my master. I don’t have any master in this profession,” he said, sitting on an ingenious desk formed out of rocks. He seemed quite comfortable. “It is just purely divine gift,” he added.

For him, he started early, from the age of six when his talent began to shine through. “I always sit on the floor, clean the ground and pick up a broomstick to sketch. And people will come and appreciate what I am doing, they will say this boy you are an artist and I liked that,” he recounted with a smile.

From then, he started trying to improve himself and realised that his happiness and fulfilment was in a perfectly executed piece.  “Every time I am painting, people will come around and they will be happy with what I am doing. Every time you are doing something you are happy with, people are happy with it, you know it’s a calling,” he said.

Discovery

After discovering himself, Ogboro’s next search was where to exhibit his work. He tried other locations before settling on his rocky gallery Asokoro.

“The very day I got to this place, it was like my feet was gummed to the floor,” he recounted.  But the place was not always looking like it is now. It took some effort to get it into shape and ready to host the works of arts.

“Everywhere was bushy. So I found my way under the bush and saw rocks. I climbed up and started bringing down the bush, cleaning it up. I did some cleaning and brought my paintings. The place was looking so lovely. So right from there, I said this is the place,” Ogboro said proudly.

Experiments

Without any dedicated schooling in arts, Ogboro looked at other artists’ works and realised they all had a style peculiar to them. He wanted his works to be different, so he started exploring the fringes of creativity and finally settled on gouache, a form of painting where opaque water colours are mixed with gum. The results are vivid images with raised reliefs.

“This is something I have been experimenting on for quite some time. Everybody has a kind of style and I wanted something for myself that makes it different from what you see out there,” he said.

An artist’s pride and pain

The manner in which he beamed when some of his works where commended proves the veracity of his statement. He is particularly pleased with the giant sculpture that stands guard at the entrance to his grotto-like studio. He had made a smaller one first but a dubious fellow had stolen it one night when the artist was at home with his family.

This one is a huge, seven foot relief sculpture of a veiled woman that at first strikes one as an Africanised version of the Virgin Mary, but her protruding stomach is pregnant, not with a child but a carved face of an African mask. Ogboro calls it “Birth of the African Mask”, his depiction of the conception and eventual delivery of African culture.

There is an obvious pride in African heritage in his displayed works. One of them is a painting, A Woman in the Nude, which occupies a prominent space in the rocky gallery. Though, the African woman in the painting is clearly in the nude, Ogboro portrayed her in a manner devoid of sultriness, unlike what is commonly obtained in films today.

But he is particularly proud of a painting of a hungry, tearful, tattered African child who is begging with a golden bowl! It is evocative of the wealth of a continent bent under the weight of poverty. And in a way, it is depicting the plight of an artist who is scrounging for a living on Abuja’s street.

“It has not been easy,” he said of the poor patronage. “Sometimes, you sit all week and nobody comes. They appreciate your work but there is no money to buy.”

The poor patronage is compounded by the high cost of materials. “The materials are expensive, quite expensive and you go and buy them and paint something and someone will come and price it in a manner that is nothing to write home about,” the painter lamented.

On an average, his paintings are sold for N10, 000. On good days, he sells some for between 70 and 80, 000 naira. The highest he has ever sold an art work was N120, 000.

But even in this bleak scenario, the triumph of art of over money has always filled his heart with joy. “The joy is in when somebody comes and says he appreciates it, it makes me very happy,” he said.