Ben Okri on swapping novels for painting: ‘Could these two great rivers of creativity merge?’ – The Guardian

To be an artist in the Lagos of my youth, you had to be multi-disciplinary. Under this democratic artistic spirit, I learned to paint. I did it secretly. At the same time, I was learning to write. Then one day, when it rained, I decided to find out what I wanted to do with my life. It was between art and literature. I put it to the test. I drew what was on the mantlepiece. Then I wrote a poem about the rain. The poem came easily, but I had to work for the drawing. I took the path of literature. Then, about seven years ago, I began painting again.

By then I had already begun collaborating with Rosemary Clunie, the Scottish painter and my long-time friend. In five years, I wrote 25 stories from inside her paintings. The paintings and stories were brought together into a book called The Magic Lamp. We decided to take our collaboration further. It is rare to find someone with whom one can truly collaborate. We began in earnest in 2017. We painted canvases together. She is a wonderful colourist. I would add marks, symbols, abstract shapes, and texts. Sometimes I contributed Nsibidis, the second oldest alphabet system in Africa after hieroglyphics.

Can a poet and a painter really work together on paintings that have an authentic sense of unity? Could these two great rivers of human creativity merge their potent energies to renew the many questions we ask about life and art? These paintings offer journeys into the human spirit in our times, using the two-dimensional surface to spring existential and immortal yearnings. Visual irony, meta-narratives and broken rhythms are deployed. Their subjects range from war, to climate change, to buried screams, to the wounds and wonders of the psyche breathing the air of our world.