Observing The Inner Man, 2022 is a powerful new body of paintings from respected visual artist Tayo Olayode. The beautifully layered works, skilfully rendered in oils and acrylics represent the fusion of past and present, memory and humankind’s journey through time and spiritual consciousness. The series symbolically uses the well-loved setting of the African traditional market place to explore greater concepts of man’s cycles of existence, consciousness and relationship with self, other and the interconnectedness of all humanity.

Tayo Olayode is one of the most exciting contemporary fine artists and an established, experimental painter and visual artist. The award-winning painter has over twenty years of experience and a thriving, established practice in his studio in Lagos, Nigeria where he was born in December 1970. Olayode through his praxis and works builds on the reputable school of Nigerian modern and contemporary painters to emerge from the country. He studied painting and visual art then graduated from Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, with a bachelor degree in fine Art.

Tayo Olayode is a founding member of the Iponri Art movement in Nigeria and has organized and co-curated several noteworthy art exhibitions in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. He was the winner of the Terra Kulture/Ford foundation Art award for the best young Artist in Nigeria 2006. The respected painter’s artistic oeuvre includes diverse works using a range of genres exploring material and methods, setting him apart as an artist who spans the world of painting from oils to acrylics and watercolours as the material basis of his work, and styles of expression from abstraction to realism and surrealism. In 2015 he won the Art house foundation scholarship to Vermont studio cultural exchange program to study at the Vermont studio center, Vermont U.S.A, and is also a recipient of association of fine Arts students (AFAS) leadership award.

Olayode’s practice includes the production of works from up-cycled materials which he transforms into sculptural installations and multimedia artworks. His upcycled art pieces are made in collaboration with his technological insights. He believes “until we start to involve technology in art in Africa, we will never leave the stage we are now”. Currently, he has the biggest standing art installation in Nigeria and the third in West Africa, it stands at over 60 feet tall.

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