OJEMEKELE IGHODALO is a Nigerian painter whose bright and warm canvases range from beautiful and
youthful figurative portraits to formal and colour abstractions. Among Nigeria's growing corpus of young
contemporary painters, Ighodalo stands out in the style he engages the many fragments of a fleeting world,
which aligns with the style of expressionism. He paints his notions of the existential realities in his immediate
society, such as life inspirations, aspirations and experiences, which he freezes on his canvases.
His mediums are mainly oil and acrylic colours on canvas and on newsprints, backed by a unique technique
which operates with a limited palette of the three primary colours of red, blue, and yellow, but for the brown
(earth colours ), which he uses to paint the human bodies in his compositions. His black and white paintings
are mostly executed on stretched news prints on canvas. Working his medium with great virtuosity, Ighodalo
transforms his mediums into an agency in pursuit of excellence in visual expression. Seeing colour as an
element that should yield powerful expressions of emotion
Ighodalo believes that the greater potency of colour finds expression in how it helps the artist achieve his
artistic idiosyncrasies. Adept in colour exploration with an emphasis on primary colour, which he calls
'primary,' Ighodalo views himself as an expressionist with an avant-garde leaning who constantly breaks
colour rules to deepen the expressive quality of his painting. Using saturated (primary) colours and raw
neutrals of black and white, Ighodalo, non-conventionally, breaks established rules in the academy style
pedagogy and practice. He believes that these rules are like barricades instead of a push on the artist's
expression of his creative freedom. Ighodalo's paintings of young people's faces, especially children's faces,
are an artist's reminiscence of the memorable moments of childhood, reminding us all of that period of
innocence that is often irreplaceable but greatly missed as we get older