The colours of Millicent’s passion

She grew up watching her father draw and she fell in love with art. She believes it runs in her blood. “It is the only thing that gives me joy,” she would say repeatedly, the passion sipping into her voice each time. But apart from just joy, painting has been putting food on the table […]

She grew up watching her father draw and she fell in love with art. She believes it runs in her blood.

“It is the only thing that gives me joy,” she would say repeatedly, the passion sipping into her voice each time. But apart from just joy, painting has been putting food on the table and paying the bills as well. She looks far from scroungy.

While her mates played house, Millicent tinkered with paints and brush, painting out the ideas in her mind. At that age, and much later into her life, she never imagined she would live off painting – not even after graduating with a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Uyo in 2004.

“After my youth service, my cousin asked me to come to Abuja and look for a job. So we were looking for a job, I and a friend, writing CVs, writing applications and exams, blah,blah blah. The pay for the offers we got was kind of small,” she said. At that point she wondered if she had studied the right course at the university.

But things changed for her when one day she went to visit her cousin at work. In the course of conversation, her cousin’s colleagues discovered that Millicent studied fine arts. They presented her with a portrait of their boss and asked her to do a pencil sketch.

With enough time on her hand and not enough money in her pocket, the idea occurred to her that if she did a nice job, there might be something good for her. So instead of a pencil sketch, she did “a big pencil drawing and framed it.”

The result was an instant hit. Her taskmasters were so impressed they asked her to show the boss. The boss too was so pleased and Millicent left with a very rewarding package.

“They gave me a package which was twice what I was being offered in a month,” she said. That prompted her to ask herself what she was doing stressing herself when all along she had a means of livelihood in her passion.

So her career as a full time painter began. Working with oil, pastel, acrylic, charcoal and working on mirrors, the young graduate has been painting out her passion and painting her way into many hearts and homes.

Not a Mistake

Her father, an artist at heart, ended up studying accounting. That was as a result of a mistake, Millicent says. When her father grew up painting every available space with art, his father (Millicent’s grandfather) thought, here is a boy with some creativity. He sent him to a commercial school because he didn’t know better. And so her father ended up studying accounting instead of arts.

For Millicent, however, she was guided by her passion and from childhood, she had a clear idea what she wanted to study.

“Art was the only subject that interested me. That was the only thing that gave me joy in secondary school, if it’s the assignment, I concentrate, I don’t miss my art class, I could sleep through my maths class. When I was filling my jamb form it’s fine arts, fine arts,” she said.

And her career choice has opened doors for her. At the NYSC orientation camp in Sokoto where she was posted in 2005, her skill with the brush came through for her. She did a portrait of the state NYSC director and was given the option of choosing where she wanted to do her primary assignment.

Her works are fascinating, inspired by her immediate environment. “The environment I live in inspires me a lot. I’m more influenced by things within my immediate environment,” she said.

For the indigene of Anambra State however, once in a while she returns to her roots. One of her paintings, August Meeting, captures in vivid colours the trend of Anambra women making annual pilgrimages in August to their village to discuss women issues. It inspired an abstract from the painter.

But of all the media Millicent dabbles with, she finds greater pleasure in pastel because “people appreciate [her] pastel more.”

I-Painter

“I think I’m a bore,” she says about herself laughing. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Millicent is vivacious, full of life and full of colours. Large colourful earrings dangle from her ears, stopping just inches away from her yellow blouse. Her love for colours shows not only in her painting but in her dressing as well.

“I think I’m like my works. I love colours and I don’t blend my works. I work with strokes,” she admitted finally.

At a recent event when she displayed some of her works including “Irony of a Man’s World” the general opinion was here is a woman who lives her art.

But there is also irony in a woman’s world.

“Victimization; it a things women experience everywhere,” she said. That was one of the challenges she has faced as an artist. She had to think hard before adding that artist don’t sell all the time, but she refutes claims that Nigerians don’t appreciate art.

“Nigerians appreciate arts but not that much. I have seen people who buy arts and keep them the way they buy shares because they believe it appreciates,” she said.

She admires the works of New Zealand painter Hayley Brown and Nigeria’s Mufu Onifade, the king of araism but she is determined to forge her own identity, she insists.

For her fellow female painters, Millicent believes there is a lot of talent that has not been exposed yet. And she urged them to “work hard and come out and socialise.” She is afraid if they don’t expose themselves, their works will only come to prominence when they are long dead.

For now, this promising artist is firmly focused on the future. She sees herself in the next five years owning a gallery and churning out stronger works. If she keeps going at this rate, that dream would soon turn to reality.