Olukun Painting

Helena Appio is a Nigerian-born artist and an award winning film maker, textile designer, artist and educator. She studied at The Central School of Art and received a First Class Honours in Printed Textiles and Fashion from Middlesex Polytechnic. Her creative output defies easy classification but exhibits a profound commitment to the stories of humble people existing outside the media limelight, whose everyday work makes a difference in the world. Her collection The Wisdom Of Angels is a suite of original paintings by Nigerian-born artist Helena Appio, also available as artists prints. The Wisdom of Angels is a series of paintings based on the talismanic iconography of traditional West African Adire textile designs. The technique of gouache and Indian ink used in these images, mirrors the technique used in the indigo resist process of Adire fabric. The collection draws our attention to the women, portrayed in this suite, who distribute good wishes and the protection of love, without name or acknowledgement. It is a tribute, celebrating female industry and creativity, and holds a critical mirror to the hierarchy in Western art criticism between ‘fine art’ and ‘craft’. It is also a manifestation of the artist’s intention to extend the magical tradition – each piece is intended to act as a shrine, conveying a blessing to its audience. Appio’s technique in these paintings mirrors the wax resist technique used in the production of the West-African adire (‘addeeray’) textiles portrayed. In both processes, the precise chemistry of the ingredients is critical. In the production of adire textiles, traditional motifs – a mixture of animal designs and geometric patterns – are reproduced on fabric using stencils, produced freehand, before dye is applied to the cloth. In Appio’s work, her process begins as she interprets these designs with bold freehand strokes of brightly coloured gouache on paper. The entire surface of the painting is then covered with a layer of black Indian ink, which is allowed to dry, before being washed off, revealing only the strokes of the artists brush.