Obi mofiyin
I paint faces that carry stories. Oil on canvas. Every portrait is a conversation I cannot have any other way.
Member Since: 1 year ago
The final brushstroke is always the scariest.
The final brushstroke is always the scariest. Because before you make it, the painting is still becoming. After you make it, it is finished. And finished means you have to let it be what it is instead of what you hoped it would be. These two are my neighbor's children. They play in the rain every time it falls and their mother calls them inside and they pretend not to hear and she pretends to be angry and everyone is happy. I painted the rain first. Then the coats. Then the splash. The faces ...
The final brushstroke is always the scariest.
The final brushstroke is always the scariest. Because before you make it, the painting is still becoming. After you make it, it is finished. And finished means you have to let it be what it is instead of what you hoped it would be. These two are my neighbor's children. They play in the rain every time it falls and their mother calls them inside and they pretend not to hear and she pretends to be angry and everyone is happy. I painted the rain first. Then the coats. Then the splash. The faces ...
The hardest part of a portrait is not the painting.
The hardest part of a portrait is not the painting. It is the stepping back. You spend forty hours with your face inches from the canvas. Every pore. Every shadow. Every line that time carved into skin you are trying to honour with pigment and patience. Then you step back. And the face either lives or it does not. His name is Chief Adeyemo. He is eighty-four. He sat for me three times and each time he told me a different story about the same war. I painted the version his eyes told, not the o...
My grandmother's hands.
My grandmother's hands. I painted them from memory because she passed before I became serious about art. I remember they were always doing something. Peeling. Stirring. Folding. Praying. Never still. Even when she sat in her chair in the evenings, her fingers moved like they were knitting invisible thread. I used burnt sienna and raw umber for the skin tones because those are the colors of earth and that is what her hands reminded me of. Soil that could grow anything. Oil on linen. 24 x 36. T...
She sat for me for two hours and never once looked at her phone.
She sat for me for two hours and never once looked at her phone. I asked her to think about the last time she felt completely safe. Her face changed three times before it settled. That third expression is the one I painted. The one between remembering and letting go. Oil on canvas. 30 x 40. I used a palette knife for the background because I wanted the texture to feel like the noise around her, while her face stayed smooth and still. The contrast is the whole painting. Portraits are not about...
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