Whether traditional or contemporary, realistic or
abstract, an artist choice is guided by expressive purpose. And Stanly Dudu’s
numerous drawing attest to this. His works revolve around women and
children, which are done by memory and imagination. “Basically, my works are
works that reflect the society, particularly women and children because I tend
to favour them more,” he said.
Dudu interprets every day activities of women.
The resulting images thus reflect the artist’s feelings about the subjects,
which are worth discussing. The woman in the village, the woman who sells food
by the roadside, the house wife who attends to children and market women are
the subjects you come across in his drawings. “The connection between me and
market women is that I find them very interesting. I find it very hard to walk
pass them. I want to look at them, the arrangement of the baskets, the
gesticulations, the transactions; all these things are what inspire me about
the market women. I kind of drawn to that,” he asserted.
His works are lavishly composed and they offer
bigger than life experience that paradoxically lead viewer away from the real
world and its surface appearances into the inside spaces of the mind and
spirit; though Dudu said his works are not spiritual. He achieves this inward
view by balancing a realistic drawing technique with addition of symbolism and
allegorical elements. His true ambition is to remind us of where we are coming
from, where we are and where we are going.
Dudu mainly work with paper and charcoal, but
introduced colour to his works last year during his second solo exhibition: Next
Episode. His works were generally monochrome, an identity he created
for himself before he decided to add colour to his works. “I realized I needed
an identity and fortunately it was at the period people got tired of seeing
coloured works everywhere. By the time I was showcasing more of these, I was
welcoming, I was receiving accolades,” he hinted.
Dudu depicts a lot of children
participating in all sorts of play, such as playing “mummy and daddy.”
He said these set of works were inspired by his childhood experiences. His major influence he said: “Is my brother,
Emmanuel Dudu. He is one of my major influences. I grew up seeing him doing
drawing, attempted the ink, do creative things. It wasn’t just him alone; I had
another brother though he fell by the roadside. I saw the two of them work.
With his (Emmanuel Dudu’s) own little achievements, I was able to pick up from
there. I must confess he has been a very big influence in my life,” he
said and described his brother as “my mentor”
He is working towards presenting something to his
viewers which said: “In the next five years I want to move beyond this, I want
to experiment things. I want to do arts that the society can associate with; I
mean art that can reach out to the whole society, even beyond because I am
equally nursing the notion of doing art internationally. Like in residency
programmes, even participate in the auction they do abroad.”
Since 2009, Dudu has been producing captivating
works which people often ask if they are paintings. Like most artist, Dudu
asserted that his has challenges. “The materials I work with, people will say
they are cheap, just paper they will say. The papers are not easy to come by. I
travel abroad, to Spain, to acquire papers,”
He is an Auchi Polytechnic graduate with Ordinary
National Diploma (OND) in General Art in 2003 and Higher National Diploma (HND)
in Painting in 2006. He is a full time studio artist.
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