A digital artist, Shogo Olalekan Uthman says exposing youth to arts at an early age will further enhance African culture and tradition.
In an interview with News Hub Mag! yesterday, Uthman who is a graduate of the University of Ilorin explained that, “It is common knowledge that Arts promotes expression and creativity and it also helps us to develop necessary soft skills which leads to healthy and thoughtful cultural discussions.
“It is therefore very safe to say that Arts help rejuvenate and enhance our culture and traditions. So it is a good thing if our young ones are exposed to arts at a very tender age as it will help them to retain the african culture and traditions.”
News Hub Mag! reports that Uthman had earlier discovered his passion for art at a tender age and this made him join a group of young digital artists to learn the techniques of the art. Soon after, he became fascinated with surrealism and the ability to create an out of the world imagination through digital means with techniques such as watercolor, oil painting, expressionism amongst others. His works are sometimes inspired by dreams.
More importantly, he uses art to create works featuring African culture and to depict children enjoying twilight stories, the pride of an African mother and father, the importance of education and hardwork.
He has exhibited his works on Kunsmatrix, a virtual exhibition website. Not only that, he featured in a number of media outlets like “the contemporary African art”, he also curated some artworks on ArtUK which features Peter Davis (b.1969), Richard Ernst Eurich (1903–1992) and George Frederic Watts (1817–1904).
Speaking on the importance of the artist in the society, Uthman stated that, “No matter how great or small an artist’s accomplishment may be, his/her path is tremendously valuable and impactful, and deserves to be honored.
“Curating a collection to highlight an artist’s accomplishments is a remarkable method to acknowledge the fantastic trip they have traveled. This would be a wonderful opportunity to not only recognize their contributions to art history, but also to give others who are not familiar with the artist’s work a window into the creative process”.
Speaking further, Uthman stated that apart from digital art, he enjoys writing and he’s currently working on a book titled ‘Dare to Dream’ which will be independently published and available on Amazon KDP and other publishing platforms.
