Ayobola Kekere-Ekun Quotes

They’re alive! Yeah, I mean, I know when the work is complete. Before I even start, I know the end. I think if I if my process was more open ended, I'd still be making my first piece. I'd never finished. I'm not gonna set myself up like that. I know who I am.

The process tends to be pretty similar. For different pieces, it starts with like resolving the idea, and how the idea kind of translates to a physical piece. Sometimes I sketch. I find myself sketching more often these days. Sometimes you just need help figuring out how the forms will interrupt space. But I don't start to anything until the piece is clear. It has to be as clear as possible. I would say, like maybe 70 80%, clear, the remaining 20% tends to resolve itself. It's like I'm building a jigsaw puzzle, where I'm the only one who can see the end image, and then I have to translate it for everyone else. There's not a lot of room for error, so I need to know exactly where I'm going. Otherwise, I can't take anyone else with me.

I dream about them. And I just wonder if they're fine. And if they're happy and well. There's always a sadness when you let work go. But it's something I also had to make peace with early on, because I knew I wanted to have certain conversations with my work. It's counterproductive to only talk to yourself about certain things, the conversation has to go beyond me. You can't engage people if you're not going to talk to them. You have to let the work go because, at some point, it's kind of cruel. When the work is done, they become beings in their own right. And I don't think I would want to be trapped with my maker for my entire life.

My sister has this theory that I'm making a self-portrait over and over again. But I've told her she's not a critic or historian, so I don’t have to listen to her to her. If she gets her theory publishes, then I'll take her seriously.

There is. There's always a chance I might never see them again. And I do have quite a few pieces that I haven’t seen since they left. And I do think about them, like are they happy?

Also, I mean, at the risk of psychoanalysing that's also a way to protect yourself, and your ability to make more work. At the risk of sounding cliché, there’s a price to pay for creating. It is a give and take, but I think its human nature and dwell on what you've lost. But I do think the work definitely gives back to you, at least it does to me.

There's also the use of material, which confuses people at first. What on earth is it? Because you're not quite sure what you're looking at, and that curiosity compels you to dig a little deeper, and just try to make sense of what you're seeing. It forces you to reconsider what you think you know, about the material, because, I mean, it's just, it's like the blandest materials, you know. It's just there, you know. You don't really think about it, and you don't really think about what it could do. And so when you see it used in such an unusual way, it does kind of trigger reconsiderations of what you think you know, and how you think you know, it. This feeds into everything.

It's a bait and switch. Yes. I think it's a bit like going to therapy. And when you have your aha moments, it’s followed by Oh my God! What else? What else have I been missing? It’s kind of like that. I think from time to time, everyone should be encouraged to reconsider what they think they know. We are trained, especially in the world we live in now, we are trained to come to swift conclusions without being very critical of how we got there.

Like, it’s not an easy career. I could have been an accountant. It would have sucked and I’d be bored and miserable! It would probably be easier. But here I am.

Before that my work was purely design. It was purely, you know, marketing and advertising 100%. Being a studio artist was never something that had been on my radar. My plan had been to finish school, start working in an ad agency, take over the world. But everything completely shifted when I finished the first piece.

You have to wrench that power back! Otherwise it’ll ruin reading for you. So I've read everything Susan Elizabeth Phillips has written. Julia Quinn. Julia London. Almost all the Julias really. They tend to have nice books. Courtney Milan, Gaelen Foley, Jennifer Ashley. The list is long. There's so many of them. And then I tend to fall down rabbit holes because they’re usually a series of books. So I’ll read one book, wonder what happened to a particular character, and then find out they have their own book and immediately start reading that. It’s the best thing, really.

The last thing I do for every piece is that little glint in the eye. And it always changes everything. Like clockwork. I always do it last, because that’s the moment the piece becomes. They move from existence as a thing to a new plane where they are beings. It feels cruel to complete the animation process any earlier than I have to. It's like it's always magical for me and I still don't know what it is about that little glint that changes everything. And quite frankly, I think at this point I've made my peace with not knowing. Besides, so much of my work is so structured, you know, and process driven. It makes the intuitive bits very special. It's fine. I don't have to know everything.

I did not! When I watch stuff, I'm so not a critic. Like for me to say a movie is bad, it was horrendously bad. I don't watch movies tv to critique them to death. I just I want to be somewhere else. I'm not looking for like, plot holes or implausible things. I actively shut down my brain from looking for twists and stuff. I rarely see what's coming. And I love it that way.

It's a box frame, like glass or perspex. It’s really important to keep people's fingers away from the pieces. That’s a downside to the what am I looking at reaction. The instinctive reaction is to touch what you’re trying to understand.

I had just found a way to paint without painting.