With 25 years as a studio artist, amid incredible works that bear witness of his sheer creative ingenuity, Chika Idu is the Nigerian-born, international visual artist to beat.
In this interview, Idu, a renowned multi-media artist, teacher and mentor, shares with Obinna Emelike, his journey in the arts, passion, techniques, feats, experimental spirit, reasons for being sought-after, among related issues.
For those who are meeting you for the first time, who is Chika Idu?
Chika Idu came into the art scene at a very unconscious stage in his life; right from primary school. Till date, when I run into my alma mater, they know and are not surprised that I am an artist. They will even tell you that since we know him, he has been like this. I had an exhibition when I was in secondary school. I planned and curated it. I also made my school to give me space to exhibit back then. That was how determined I was.
I was also fortunate to have parents that supported me to do what I wanted to do, to the extent that my father told my brothers that I am the one that really wants to do art and that the rest should choose other courses to pursue in school. My father did that because everybody in our house was sort of art inclined and he doesn’t want all his children to be artists. So, they really supported me.
But I think the artist in me made me a curious person, very researchful and I look for stories. I am more like a documentary person than movies. My wife will tell you that this guy likes documentaries. So, all these things have contributed to the person that I am today. I am also an educationist. I teach. I have this gift of being able to transmit knowledge to the next person. This is very fortunate for me.
How do you describe yourself and your art?
I see myself on a journey. I also see my art as the evidence of my journey and that is why it has not gotten to a stop. I also see myself like a philosopher. There are a lot of things I question and I try to find answers to.
I also live as a question for whoever wants to answer it or research it. I am a curious mind and I continuously search for a better way for everything. Whether for me to become a better person or for my art to become better, I search. I also reach out to the international community beyond my local community to challenge myself so that I do not get to a point of stop, where I will begin to see myself as a champion because when that happens, you can no longer grow.
I have not seen myself as having arrived at any point. For me, I am still on a journey.
How has the journey been?
The journey has been very fruitful and encouraging. It is a journey that if there is anything like reincarnation, (of course, I know there is none) it is a life that I will live again.
It has been a very interesting journey and very impactful. I have been very experimental in my journey. I have succeeded in discovering many ways of doing whatever I want to do because I see myself like a very restless person.
I have come up with many ways of painting and I have not finished until the day God will say stop and I will stop.
I am still going to evolve and the fact that I am doing what I am doing now does not mean I might still be doing it tomorrow. I don’t like to be put in a box. I don’t want to be defined by anything.
How many years have you been a studio artist?
I have been a studio artist, professionally after school, for 25 years now. But I have been in practice, to my consciousness, for over 40-45 years.
What is the secret of your successful career?
The first is that I have been very curious. I have always tried to look for different ways of doing things. I have been very open to criticism and that has also helped me. People will say that I have been humble.
Why are your works selling like wildfire?
I don’t know. Really I don’t know, maybe it is the grace of God, and God is merciful.
Are you ruling out creativity as a factor?
No, there is creativity to it. You can’t rule out creativity because if you pray and ask God for direction, He will inspire you.
He says, I will open the windows of heaven and that means ideas.
What are your techniques?
I paint three mediums now; I paint watercolor, I paint acrylic and oil. But very soon, I am going to introduce another one.
I call the technique for oil painting ‘light against visual distortion’. I see particles of colour, I see imperatives; things that impair vision because I was not wearing classes for a long time and that did a lot. I sort of see everything in particles of colour and not as a solid, but in colours. This happened when I was in school during harmattan. We were sitting outside in the evening and a car and motorcycle were coming into Auchi with a strong light and this car ran back and unsettled the dust. As the light was going through, I was seeing people fading, not complete anymore, it was like people became the dust or the dust became the people. So, that blew me away. I started to replicate what I saw.
For acrylic, I really did not theme it under any name. But I regarded what I saw as light against visual distortions. So, for the acrylic I tried to look for a way because anytime I paint oil, I have a different result, I have a distortion of another, I see a face, I see it in another and I know I couldn’t achieve this in oil because it needs layers of different patterns. But I couldn’t do that with oil because it takes time to dry.
It was because acrylics dry fast that was why I was able to do this; build layers upon layers.
I do it now, but still, I have not seen the perfection of it. So, it is still a journey in progress.
There is also watercolor that I paint, which is also completely different.
It is more fluid in technique, where I use a lot of water and I leave spaces. I am the first artist to do this, though a lot of artists are doing it now.
In the past, the artists would paint the whole paper. I was the one that started leaving spaces in the paper and to use the natural paper as my source of strongest light. This is why there are a lot of places that are not painted in my watercolor.
The above is because I couldn’t achieve the kind of bright light that I wanted, so I left the paper blank and just painted around it and allowed the viewers to fill in the gap with their mind.
So, when you see it, though the watercolour seems like it is not complete, in your mind, you feel in the gap.
A lot of artists are doing it now and that is part of the problem. If you are going to copy somebody, find out what the person is trying to say or achieve, so that when you are copying, you copy well.
Apart from painting, have you tried other media?
I used to sculpt a lot. I used to sculpt metal, but it was affecting my eyes, so I stopped. But I have people that I trained in metal that are very good metal artists now.
I am going back because I do bottle collage in my private studio and not in a large scale. Those are quite private to me.
As I do all these, I see myself dabbling into sculpture very soon because I am concluding on some things. Again, I have some visuals in my head that will only come out in sculpture.
Which year has been the best in your art career and why?
This year is good (laughs). Every year has been good because each year is a progress from the last year.
There was a year I met you, which was a very good experience for me. There was a year a lady in the USA did an article on me and then I had a television interview and there was a lot of noise in the US, in Indiana to be precise.
It was a good year, but the following year was a leap from that year.
Last year, I had three exhibitions, which for me was a lot. But I couldn’t say no because I wanted to see if I could push myself that far.
Yes, because my work takes a long time, so I wanted to see if I could really do more.
It means 2023 was your supper year?
Well, if you call it that, but this year has been fantastic too.
For you to have a very fantastic last year means that you are still relevant. Just like I said, artists have their times and seasons; they blow and all of a sudden, they disappear. It is not like they are not working, it is as if everybody has had enough because the artists are still doing the same, hence they are waiting for something new.
For me, to be even more relevant this year, as if there were no three exhibitions last year, it is a lot because I hardly have paintings down. No matter how many I paint in a year, I hardly have unsold paintings and I am not cheap.
Recently I visited Sachs Gallery in Lekki Phase 1, Lagos, with my family and my children started pointing to the walls, saying daddy see your paintings. But all the paintings had tags on them, meaning that they had been sold. So, I don’t have works at that gallery because they are all taken.
Then, the gallery will tell me to bring in some works.
Again, recently, while bringing one of my paintings, someone saw it and bought it just like that. So, it has been like that where I don’t seem to have paintings available. Any painting you see in my studio now, I am just keeping it.
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Which of your works is the longest to finish?
The work is ‘The Swimmers’. The largest ones can take close to four weeks and I might keep it for more than three to four months, just looking at it to be sure.
Any work that took the longest means that I wasn’t satisfied with it. It means that I struggled through it and there have been such works.
I have a painting in my studio that is still hanging; it has taken eight years and still not done.
When do you hope to finish the painting?
People have come to buy it, and I told them that it is not done and they think that I am crazy.
One day I might find out why it is not done. It is like, the work talks, it sort of speaks. If you try to finish it for the sake of finishing it, you will spoil it.
I have a painting in my studio, which I have been on for two to three weeks now. I wanted to just finish it and send it to Patty, owner of Alexis Galleries. I almost messed it up and I was shouting at myself, my friend, are you crazy! I just left it and that was why I gave Patty only one painting at the gallery today.
How do you get inspiration to paint?
Like the painting I told you that I have been working on for eight years, it has been hanging for over two years and I have not touched it.
But I might just walk in front of it and ask what do you want, what am I supposed to do with you, why can’t I finish this work and the answer will come in the twinkle of an eye, like an eureka moment and you get excited.
As I am dressed now going out, when the answer hits you like a mad man, you will stay back and continue the work. It is like a puzzle. But inspiration is different, it leads you to start a work, but when you are going through it, you will lose consciousness of what you are doing.
So, inspiration for me might be something you saw on the road while coming back, it might be a sad or happy situation you saw on the road while coming back, it might be while going through a magazine and you see a perfect picture in front of you.
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Does your job require further training like in some professions?
Yes. I train every day. It does not necessarily mean draftsmanship, though you need to continually practice. People want to improve themselves.
But when you do what you do, naturally being in your element, you will improve. So, you continuously practice and that is training in itself, even though it is not called training.
But research is useful because there are lots of things you do that can facilitate these other smaller things that you want to do. When lawyers go for training, they are just receiving information.
How are you passing on your great craftsmanship?
I have young people that I mentor not only in the arts, but in life because I do a lot of research about life. I teach art and I try to pass on the knowledge to others.
But I am very careful not to teach myself. I open people’s minds up to discover themselves so that even if I am not around, they can continue. I train them to become independent and to continue the journey of self-discovery.
