Step Forth Print

After several years working as a Human Resource professional while painting on the side with Diseye Tantua as her early art mentor, Linda Ozioma Adiele is now a full time artist working out of her studio in Port Harcourt. Born in Manchester, England where she lived as a child, she has lived and worked in Nigeria for a greater part of her adult life. Linda resided for short periods in Grenoble and Clermont Ferrand, France where she admired works of the masters and attended short evening art classes at Atelier Diagonales in Clermont Ferrand. Whenever she travels (Italy, Germany and recently to Dubai, UK and Hungary), she first would want to visit the museums and exhibitions. She works mainly in oils and charcoal. Linda was once a student of languages, but (as has been observed by those who have gone before), she tells herself the following, “if I could say it in words, there would be no need to paint.” In trying to state her purpose, the mischievous glint in the eye of her subject, that hesitant smile, the shape of that fleeting reflection, all make her reach for her paintbrush and not her pen. She is inspired by the muted and also contrasting colours of her African culture but moves beyond realism to tell social narratives.