In Charcoal, Edosa Ogiugo Captures Movement

By Udemma Chukwuma

Some drawings only work if the artist trusts their own hand: no erasing, no second-guessing, just a willingness to let a line be wrong in service of being alive. Six recent charcoal studies from Nigerian artist Edosa Ogiugo make that case well. And one thing you cannot take away from Ogiugo is the bold strokes in his painting and drawing.

This collection opens with a seated figure in a studio, worked in heavy charcoal with a standing figure sketched more sparingly behind. It is a strong diagonal composition; the seated figure leans into an easel, weight settling convincingly through the stool legs. The one drawback is a background that gets a little too busy, competing with the figure instead of framing it. It is a minor complaint in a drawing that otherwise announces, immediately, that this is someone comfortable building form out of directional hatching rather than outline.

Ogiugo describes himself simply as a painter, illustrator, visualizer, draughtsman, “ever fascinated by movement,” in his own words, with a love for “the rhythm of a well-loaded brush on a painting surface.” That fascination isn't a throwaway bio line. It's the organising idea behind everything in this set.

Two of the six drawings- a Study for Ice Cream Runs and a piece titled Positive Energy- tackle groups of figures walking away from the viewer, rendered almost entirely through repeated vertical strokes. The marks do double duty, describing both bodies and motion at once. Positive Energy is the more resolved of the pair; the background hatching there reads as wind or momentum rather than filler, background and subject working in concert. The earlier study is looser and more exploratory, clearly a study in the true sense, not trying to be a finished statement. 

A back-view figure walking away, captioned Eko for Show, is arguably the most controlled drawing in the set. The silhouette is strong, the coat massed in confident dark strokes, with two distant figures placed at just the right scale to suggest depth without stealing attention. What stands out most is restraint: Ogiugo lets the bare paper do the work of sky and ground rather than filling every inch, and the drawing is better for it.

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Of the six, the clear standout is a study of polo riders, where Ogiugo breaks from pure black-and-white charcoal to add streaks of sienna and burnt red across the horses. The effect is immediate: what could have been a static tonal exercise becomes genuinely kinetic. A lead rider with a raised mallet anchors the whole composition on a hard diagonal, and the colour does real compositional work rather than sitting on top as decoration. The horses’ legs blur into some tangled, unresolved passages toward the bottom of the sheet, but at the speed this piece was clearly drawn, that reads more as momentum than as a flaw.

The set closes on its most emotionally weighted piece: a family group, captioned Days into Memories, gathered close with a child looking down and smaller figures at the margins. This is also where the drawing’s one consistent soft spot shows up most clearly: faces throughout this body of work are gestural at best, which barely registers in the walking or crowd pieces, where figures are shown mid-motion or from behind. Here, with the group facing forward and still, the less resolved facial features leave some of the emotional weight sitting on posture and clustering rather than expression.

Taken together, these six sketches read less like a portfolio than like a working sketchbook, and that is a compliment. Ogiugo’s hand is confident, his sense of gesture and weight is reliable even at speed, and his best pieces, the polo riders and the walking man, show a real understanding of when to hold back.

If there is a note for where the work could go next, it is in resolving faces with the same confidence he brings to bodies, and being more deliberate about when background hatching should support the figure and when it should simply get out of the way. For an artist this focused on rhythm and movement, it is fitting that the drawings work best in motion, and lag slightly whenever they stand still.

That command of gesture and movement sits within a career that has already spanned more than four decades. Born in 1961, Ogiugo trained formally at Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, Nigeria, earning diplomas in General Arts and Fine Arts and Painting. He has worked as a full-time studio artist since 1992, moving through roles as a guest lecturer, creative director, illustrator and art director, including a stint on the Nigeria Television Authority’s Pot of Life in Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria.

His exhibition history stretches from his 1995 solo debut in Lagos through group and two-person exhibitions in Nigeria and the UK, and a 2018 showing at SOAS in London. He is a member of the Society of Nigerian Artists and the Guild of Professional Fine Artists Nigeria, and he is now based in Canada.

Works featured

Days into Memories
Digital Transfer
Untitled (Polo Study)
Eko for Show
Ice Cream Runs
Atelier
Images courtesy of the artist. All rights reserved.

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