BY TAJUDEEN
SOWOLE
PAINTER Aladegbonbge Aderinsoye recently joined other artists to stress
the importance of drawing skills.
With the
theme, Nothing But the Truth, these concerned artists held a show to promote draughtsmanship in art.
But why this emphasis on drawing skills?
For Aderinsoye, drawing goes beyond art; it has a scientific perspective too. The
artist explains this in Water and
Reflection, his solo show which opened at the Yusuf Grillo Gallery, Yaba
College of Technology (Yabatech) Lagos, on Thursday 21, June and ends on July 8.
“It’s a show that aims at reawakening drawing and painting,”
he says, expressing himself in watercolour, charcoal and pencil.
Aderinsoye had shown his skills on
canvas, particularly with mixed media in one of his past four solo shows, A Visual Representation: An Anthropological
Study of Ilara-Mokin (2010) at the same venue.
And in his
current outing, he is also pushing ahead that medium, making diverse statements
with it.
Some of the landscape pieces, to
a large extent expose Aderinsoye’s slim escape from the swimming medium,
producing quite a rich fluctuation of aesthetic between lines and shades. And
that he also attempts to depict a shimmering surface of river in some of the
works such as Digging Deep, perhaps,
shows an artist, who would not succumb to the rigid and dreaded dictate of
watercolour.
However, in the figural works such as Look At Me, Coming To Agreement, the water and paper medium proves a bit
difficult just as Aderinsonye, too, appears too ambitious. And thanks to his
drawing skill, which gives him space to ventilate, using highlight to shape out
some of the figures.
Alternative medium of visual
expressions such as conceptual art, which often include installation and
performance arts, may not necessarily be escapists, as some would argue, but
just a sign of the dynamics of art. Aderinsoye says, “I have no issues with artists, who implore
such medium, but it becomes incomplete without the fundamental of art, which is
the skill to draw.”
He argues, “no matter what career you
chose, if the basic spoken and writing English is missing, even as a graduate,
you can’t go far. You know some graduate cannot construct simple good English.
Such defects will surely affect their career.”
Using draughtsmanship, which is fundamental to art, as an analogy in
analysing the developmental challenges facing Nigeria, the artist argues that
without the basics, nothing can be done. “For example, it’s impossible for President
Goodluck Jonathan to perform well, because the foundation and the structure of
government is weak, even before he was elected.”
He brings in scientific analysis of
painting, water and reflection, yet within creativity and passion for the
basics of art. This, he says, goes to interpret human adventure in the context
of master-apprenticeship or father and child chains. On each situation, “when
the master or the father dies, the legacy is continued by the child because the
fundamental has been laid.”
In 2008, Aderinsoye had a two-man show titled Times Of Life at Yabatech; MFA Painting
Exhibition at University of Benin (Uniben), 2006; A Nation and Her Strokes of Policy (Yabatech).
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