Friday, 31 May 2013

Artist uses celebrities’ paintings to draw costumers



His workshop and gallery are situated on a roof top near where he displayed some of his works along Medical Road, Ikeja, Lagos.  One spectacular thing that attract passersby to Fem Creator’s displayed works showed that he derived satisfaction in painting and showcasing works on entertainment celebrities with a few works on President Goodluck Jonathan, dancers, seascape and so on.
Born Femi Ayodele, he learnt the art of painting in 2000 from Mr. Ayo Badeji Ajagbe in Mushin and set up his own gallery in 2005.
Ayodele is a very business minded person. In order to make a successful career in painting, he decided to do works mostly on celebrities which he used to attract buyers. Notable ones among his works are paintings of Nollywood actresses: Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, Genevieve Nnaji, Funke Akindele-Oloyede, and Stephanie Okereke-Linus.

Others are painting of popular musicians including 2Face, D’Banj and Late Fela Anikulapo Kuti.
He sheds light on why he chose celebrities as his unique selling proposition: “Art business is a very competitive one, since my location is a very busy road in the heart of Lagos, I thought of strategies that would help me to break even in my career and decided to display works on celebrities. Though, nobody has bought any of the celebrities’ work from me, when people see them, they know I am good so they give me work. In a nutshell, I use them for advertisement,” Femi said.
He express gratitude to God for guiding Him to choose his career and said he has a lot of costumers who visit his gallery on a daily basis to admire his works, give him work or purchase artworks.
“I have a lot of costumers and people come from all walks of life to patronise me. Since I don’t have any other job apart from painting, I put a lot of effort to do my work so that it will look attractive. Similarly, the prices of my works are competitive, depending on the size of the work, but the cheapest work in my gallery is fifty thousand naira (N50, 000.00).”
The Akure, Ondo State born artist revealed that they were four apprentices during his four years training, but he is doing better than them, presently. The 30-year-old bachelor also said he couldn’t further his education after schooling in Ilupeji Grammar School, Oshodi, Lagos due to finance so he went to learn how to do visual work immediately he left secondary school. He has never regretted doing his work and hoped to do exhibition before the year runs out.
 Fem is confident and aspires to be one of the best artists in Nigeria in the next five years and believed that his contribution towards the promotion of Nigeria’s rich culture and tradition through art would continue to boost Nigeria’s economic growth.



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