Artist urges govts. to make art compulsory in schools

An Hyperrealism artist, Olumide Oresegun, whose art broke in the internet in 2016, has urged all tiers of government to make art a core subject in the school curriculum.

Hyperrealism is a genre of painting and sculpture that resembles high-resolution photography.

It is considered an advancement of photorealism by the methods used to create the resulting paintings or sculptures.

Oresegun told our reporter in Lagos that the country needed an institution where art would be central part of study from primary, secondary and all tertiary institutions.

“If we have to embrace growth, creativity will be uppermost in our leaders mind on how to use it to promote and progress the nation.

“Technology, science, music, fashions, all arts need unique creativeness for them to bloom,’’ he said.

The artist said that pupils, students and others needed to be taught outline on how to draw to be able to create something out of nothing.

“Cars, machines and all the things we use and we see around us are all works of arts that started with drawings and artists are doing all that.

“If people are not taught outlines, how then can someone create because creation starts from drawings before it develop into something,’’ he said.

He said that artist were also employable anywhere and be self-employed.

Oresegun said that government could set up structures where visual arts would be majorly taught in schools which would help to speed up a lot of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) base.

“If art is given prominence, people will key into it and it will affect every profession positively which affect the development of the society,’’ he said.

Oresegun said that he under studied an international renowned artist, Michelangelo Di Lodovico Buonorroti Simoni, an Italian Sculptor, painter, architect and poet and some others to come up with hyperrealism.

He said that enjoyed sitting around the river at Bariga in Lagos or the Third Mainland bridge to watch children swimming, while he did his drawings.

“It makes me believe that something good will come out of Nigeria and Africa with my painting in hyperrealism.

“I use hyperrealism to project Nigerian arts and culture, so teaching our people will produce a lot of good things from us,’’ he said.

Oresegun’s high resolution painting depicts water droplets sliding down the faces of children as if they are taking their baths in the water. It looks like photographs but it is not.

He was invited by CNN to explain how he was able to create the kind of work.

Oresegun graduated from Yaba College of Technology in Fine Arts. He is from Ijebu-Ode, Ogun but born in Lagos, Ikorodu.

He has participated in many exhibitions within and outside Nigeria.