Painting Lagos with Damola Adepoju

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
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
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
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
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.