ART by 'uno

As a child, I drew comics and figurines. During my early teens, I learned to sculpt. While in secondary school, I operated a small art studio focusing mainly on sculpture and sign-writing. Portraiture was more fascinating to me and at the time I could not paint portraits.

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Graduating a year earlier from secondary school, I have forgone going to the university to study law and instead applied to study Painting. Naturally, my focus was to learn how to paint. And I did. Soon, realism and portraiture lost their impression on me and I was fascinated by broken forms, raw expressions and abstractions. I was inspired by legends like Pablo (Picasso), Jean Michel, and the Benin sculpture.

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After university and a few group exhibitions, I got a job as a data manager in a bank. In 2014, after almost ten years of a combo of banking, ICT, entrepreneurship, art, writing and activism, I was shot twice in the head and left for dead. Well, I survived. After a year of treatment, I fled my country. I spent some time in Russia, then Germany and finally arrived in Luxembourg in 2017. A new start for me meant going back to my roots, art. In it, I found peace and happiness and a world of perfection. Although I survived and made full recovery from the incident, I still had pains to deal with. Today, art is more than a career path or way of expression to me. It is both a therapy and treatment.

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I paint and sculpt as I feel. They're usually beautiful. I tame vibrant colours in my unique painting technique. My story like all of ours isn’t one sad page or a book. It's a combination of many pieces, books and series. Even the saddest stories can come alive beautifully if told by a gifted storyteller. So, I paint by literally putting many irregular shapes and pieces together to tell a whole “beautiful” story. Whether with brushes, spray guns, tubes, palette knives or spatula, I love the loose aggregation of lines, dots, forms and shapes to create the whole. My simple goal as an artist is to create positive and happy emotions for people through my artworks. I also hope I can inspire others, artists or not, with my story.