I’m looking forward to attending his coronation! I got to hear [his] unreleased music while I made his portraits. Nothing quite like his sound. He’s the real deal! He’s about to be crowned and I’m certain. I’m a songwriter myself so I can tell [that] Nigeria and indeed the world are about to discover their new favorite genius.
One day I’ll be boasting about how I heard those songs before they came out . The idea for Adekunle Gold‘s portraits came two days before he called me. I had just read about Bezaleel on Exodus 31 and how God gave him creative genius to work with Gold, silver and bronze.
I had made some art images that emotionally said everything I wanted but just never felt quite right. Bezaleel’s work spoke to me. My work was missing some metal so I began to study the use of metal in sculpture and design- how to bring that into my work.
I was trying to figure out which of my artiste friends I’d like to collaborate with when Adekunle Gold’s messages started flooding in. He sent me photographs of designs and concepts with gold elements and asked me what I thought. I just smiled. God had gifted me with a beautiful work and had taken time to prepare me .
I tried to stay calm as I started going on about how I was tying to decode Exodus 31 and bring it into my work. I roughly described some ideas that I had for his album art. I didn’t need to say much more, he was completely in!
I collaborated with Sobukola Oluwanisola , an artist friend of mine and we decided on using recycled metal built into crowns and deconstructed as pieces for the portraits. So here are our portraits rustic and futuristic, our Adire clad, King explorer. Ready to launch!!
