Ekene Okoliachu
Degree: Fine Art
University: University of Aberystwyth
Graduation Year: 2022
New Blood Art Commentary
The extant atmosphere curves and billows above Ekene Okoliachu’s oil landscapes. The fecund colours the artist uses impress that this sky is a realm both of and not of this world. Infinity is incoming; the overwhelming experience is harnessed by the artist.
Ekene references tonal impressionism a la Stuart Davies – an artist who has spent his career searching for “the perfect light” – as an important benchmark for his style. For marking the land Ekene uses oil paint in one way, contrasting with how he uses it to mark the sky. For the former the paint is laid slowly, deliberately, thickly down. For the latter, the artist blurs and sweeps the paint ethereally, conveying the sense of an ever-shifting, un-solid sky.
In a Western European tradition the landscape is imbued with a sense of destiny – an open-ended destiny here, and a bright one.
Artist Statement
The focus of my painting is the Western Europe rural landscape. Capturing elements of the landscape in its purest form by extracting unreal images from my imagination most times. My area of focus is the skies as I use rich colours which makes the painting speak for itself. I like to borrow a particular technique from a tonal impressionist landscape artist Stuart Davies, a great influence in my painting journey which has helped me propelled in “mark-making”. I use this technique in illustrating the basic components causing an illusion of detail rather than painting what really exists.
Group Exhibitions
(2022) Degree show, Aberystwyth School of Art, School of Art Buarth Mawr, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth
(2022) make/believe, Tessa Sidey gallery, School of Art Buarth Mawr, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth