Portrait of an Artist

Influenced by the painting of an old Italian Artist – Giuseppe Arcimboldo (An Artist that painted fruits and vegetables to creative people’s portraits), O. Yemi made this painting “Portrait of an Artist” as a tribute to one of his art teachers, Jim Meaders. After 30 years, O. Yemi thought of this teacher and all the help he rendered to him while he was studying in America. He picked up his photo album and looking through the pages, saw Jim Meaders picture in academic gown that he took during the graduation in 1984. He imagined Jim’s bushy hair as brush head and he decided to re-do the painting he did as class work in 1984 in honour of Jim Meaders. Jim Meaders is a Painter and as in many of his recent paintings, O. Yemi likes to use his paintings to make a statement. He is using this painting to tell the viewer the occupation of his subject. To start the painting O. Yemi sketched his subject profile first on tracing paper and then arranged the artist’s tools to form the shape of the profile. He carefully assembled brushes of different sizes and shapes to makes up the bushy hair of the head and the face, Paint tube and a pencil that overlapped together to make various anatomical shapes of an Artist’s face. Brushes for the hairy parts of the face, a pencil for the nose and a paint tube for the mouth of the portrait. After the concept was formed on paper, O. Yemi started to use the image on paper to guide him to do final sketch on canvas. O. Yemi choice of medium for this work is oil on canvas and he started applying paints on the image already sketched on the canvas. He kept making changes as the painting progressed to afford any gap as he exchanged round brushes for flat brushes in the area of the mouth and a pointed brushes for the area of the moustache of the painting.