Hoary Rooftops (2019) by Damola AdepojuTerra Kulture
Artist Damola Adepoju was born in Lagos, Nigeria and studied painting at the prestigious Lagos State Polytechnic. He is an expressive painter with a colourful style. He is known for his superb interpretation of light and rendition of everyday life, including streetscapes, architecture, sociocultural and economic activities.
Here are six paintings that represents his unique style; using monochrome and gold brushstrokes on newspaper collages.
Placidity (2019) by Damola AdepojuTerra Kulture
Placidity, 2019
A feeling of calmness and quietness. A disposition free from stress or emotion from frantic Lagos. Damola's painting of placidity is a mixed media piece that employs materials like newspaper collages and trichromatic painting to represent peace through stilts on the water.
Marina (2018) by Damola AdepojuTerra Kulture
Marina, 2018
Marina is a coast and a small port where carriage and cargo boats are docked. Damola's shadowy mixed media painting story of Marina is not far-fetched; he depicts an aerial view of two busy adjacent roads with soft gold brushwork depicting the yellow buses and a small passenger-cargo by the seashore. At the foreground rests dark and grayish buildings bolstering the natural source of light. This side of Lagos accommodates hue and echoes a home of wisdom, struggle and survival.
Homeward Journey (2018) by Damola AdepojuTerra Kulture
Homeward Journey, 2018
This is a representation of the bridge that rips through the top of the sea as the cloudy buildings and the Lagos island skylines recede into the horizon. It is before dawn. The bridge takes the entire foreground and flows into the buildings. The glow in the road gives a contrast effect between the dark shadows of the moving buses.
Waterside (2019) by Damola AdepojuTerra Kulture
Waterside, 2019
Damola's waterside is configured in a wooden stilt settlement seated on and around the tranquil water bank. The water reflects the yellow light which spreads and flows into the grayish skylines brewing into the atmosphere. Prominent to this gold foreground are boats on the water, like cars parked outside a home.
Hoary Rooftops (2019) by Damola AdepojuTerra Kulture
Hoary Rooftops, 2019
A perch at the rooftop gives you an aerial view, like that of a passenger sitting at the right window seat of an air vessel turning to land near Murtala Muhammed Airport, captures the beauty of the clumsy rooftops. Lagos, which means "lake" was a name given to the settlement by the Portuguese.
In order to link the island to the mainland, bridges were constructed over the channel draining the lagoon into the Atlantic Ocean; which forms Lagos harbor. To unveil the height of one of these bridges, Damola employs acrylics and newspaper collage to depict the rooftops of settlements on and around the water bank, as well as the water and its reflection to light.
Evening Lights (2019) by Damola AdepojuTerra Kulture
Evening Lights, 2019
A point view of the Lagos Island street scene, with a combination of repetitive of old story buildings highlighted with the newspaper collage inside Eko street, where the tough last at the expense of the weak. Wisdom is not enough. Brilliance is not enough. A combination of brain and brawn attracts all antecedents of success in Lagos.
At the center of the vision is an outbreak of a strong flood light, stronger than the natural source, indeed mystery lighting is as old as man himself. The strong light illuminates the street but loses its intensity in the middle of the road as it gets closer, and diffuses into the sky.
Terra Kulture; Damola Adepoju
