Seeing In Colours With Chinwe Roy

FOR many Nigerians living in London, the deeper heart of England can be like a foreign country rarely ventured into. After a two-hour drive from the city, we lose ourselves for another hour or so in the Suffolk countryside, looking for the home of Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy, artist to Queen Elizabeth II and a major participant in last year’s CHOGM ‘Celebrate’ exhibition.

We finally reach our destination, guided by Roy’s assistant who helpfully waits on a quiet country lane to save us further perambulating. It would be hard to imagine a home more perfect for an artist than Roy’s. Set on generous grounds in a tranquil idyll,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale agate beads from china, the house — a former mill — looks like something out of the Robert Redford film A River Runs Through It. It is an immediate feast for my six-year-old’s imagination.

As we alight from the car, he exclaims: “Wow!”, sighting chickens roaming free. The average London child only ever sees live chickens on television. Then he swoops the other way and lets out another round of excited ‘wows’ at the river that passes right under the house. From her office inside, the artist can hear the river rushing beneath and can see it gushing through right outside her window.

Excitable six-year-olds aside, we are here to talk, over a light lunch, about Chinwe Roy’s work and her new London exhibition, Seeing In Colours. The new works focus on the artist’s “passion for colours and her desire to make them sing.”

A colourist who is also strong on drawing, Roy explains that the title of the exhibition chose itself “because I see in colours.” Some have described the brightness of her work as ‘the heat of Africa’, and she would tend to agree: “I believe my Africaness always comes out in my work.” She reasons that being away from Africa brings about an enhanced image of the continent in her artist’s mind, allowing her to feel more acutely because of the dislocation. The Flame of the Forest — Roy’s favourite tree — defies her dislocation theory since its “colour can never be more acute in the mind because it is very strong.”

Chinwe Roy’s eighth artistic impression of the Flame of the Forest features in the exhibition. An earlier one in the series hangs on a wall in her homely kitchen; it is a study of one that grew in her old school in Nigeria. The tree acquired an even greater significance when Roy’s sister died during childbirth some years ago.

Visiting Nigeria for six weeks for the burial, the artist had arrived during the flowering season to see every one of her beloved tree in full flame. Towards the end of the six-week stay, her car broke down under one Flame of the Forest that was beginning to fade; all its reds were on the ground. The tree came to represent Roy’s sense of loss at the death of her sister. She says: “It has become a symbol of me, for me, of that time.”

The artist adopted her late sister’s baby girl and returned with the little one to England just one week before having to paint her most famous subject — the Queen.

“Nothing ever happens the way you expect”, says the artist, who went for her first session with the monarch still grieving. As things were then, the Queen was just another person to paint; and Chinwe Roy went into Buckingham Palace thinking: “If this is anything to do with life, please take it away God because I want my sister back.”

Once inside, it suddenly occurred to her that she didn’t know how to curtsy. She started practising but panicked at the thought of being observed on hidden cameras by amused guards. And courtiers, told that Roy did not want the Queen to sit, replied: “We can’t tell her that. You tell her.”

When the monarch made her entrance later, she was surprisingly co-operative and stood without a fuss. She recalled having met Roy at the unveiling of her portrait of Chief Emeka Anyaoku and, seeing that the artist was nervous, started telling jokes. Roy at first resisted the urge to laugh in front of the Queen of England but in the end gave in, laughing till tears streamed down her face.

She wept for real when the royal asked how many children she had, her thoughts turning to her new ‘third child’ and her late sister. Posing on another occasion, it became clear that the Queen had not forgotten Roy’s emotional state during the first session. She asked after the artist’s children, wanting to know if her sons were getting on with her new daughter. “I was impressed with her”, says Roy, whose account shows the human side of a monarch often accused of being out of touch with the feelings of ordinary people.

Viewing the result of the first session on canvas, the Queen had expressed her approval. “When I walked out of Buckingham Palace, my feet didn’t touch the ground”, recalls the artist.

Praise for the Golden Jubilee portrait of the Queen came from across the board and has enhanced Chinwe Roy’s portfolio. She does not feel pigeonholed by the tag ‘artist to the Queen’, as it has helped highlight her other works without overshadowing them. Not bad for a lady who first started drawing and painting in her spare time.

Discussing the state of the arts in Nigeria, Roy laments the fact that art is not seen as a profession in the country; and that those with artistic abilities get neither the encouragement nor the facilities. Only a handful of schools taught art when she was growing up in Nigeria, says the artist,Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. who observes that the situation remains the same.

Keen to stress that celebrated artists abound in the West only because they are given the opportunity, Roy points out: “When you are in Nigeria, you don’t have the opportunity.” She sought to address this in the CHOGM exhibition for which all the states of Nigeria were asked to send at least one child to Abuja. Sponsored by companies like Guinness and MTN, and with the very best art materials supplied by UK-based Windsor & Newton, the schools education programme lasted four days.Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. According to Roy, it was “a very uplifting experience with some exceptionally talented children who were very hungry to learn. It was most humbling and at the same time rejuvenating.”

Some of the participating artists also spent time talking to the children in the workshop. Chinwe Roy still remembers “the looks on the kids’ faces, it was so important to meet the artists.”

When at one point the Heads of States’ Conference Room was not in use, she took the children inside and encouraged them to sit on the chairs, telling them: “You can do this one day. This chair is not too big for you.”

Today, she worries that there is no framework in place for this kind of art education programme to continue but hopes something was ignited in the children who would have thought: “If this tiny woman can do it, so can we.”

On the whole, Roy believes there is “still a long way to go” in Nigeria on all things concerning the arts.

Expressing admiration for fellow CHOGM exhibitor Bruce Onobrakpeya, Roy reports seeing artists all over England using the style of printing he originated. She never misses the opportunity to tell them a Nigerian started it, and sees hers and Onobrakpeya’s work as representing two different faces of Nigeria.

Asked what her ‘face of Nigeria’ is, Roy concedes that it is difficult to put a finger on it, but insists: “No Englishman, European or American can pick up my pictures and claim it. They can say it’s universal but they cannot claim it.” Her portrait of the Queen features many places of the Commonwealth in the background, and someone once remarked upon Nigeria’s omission from the work. “That signature at the bottom; where does it come from?”, was Chinwe Roy’s reply. She declares: “My work is me, what I feel about things is me, what I am is Nigerian.”

“The peak of civilization is art”, states Roy, who would like to see African governments creating an environment where people can learn, understand and use art to express themselves. “Try to find out about Nigeria five hundred years ago, all you get is art... You get the knowledge that in those days people appreciated art. Kings, rich, poor, even groups - commissioned art. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t be as advanced as it was. Five hundred years from now, what will they find?” She cites examples of Europeans who claimed that Africa was not civilized enough to produce art only to eat their words on seeing pieces like the Bronzes; and paraphrases one that famously said: “I have to admit that these barbarians are more civilized than we are.”

My son, playing nearby, suddenly takes interest and asks Roy: “What are barbarians?” She explains gently: “That’s a word that people who are not intelligent use about other people.”

The artist regularly finds herself fending off those who argue that Africa has no art.High quality stone mosaic tiles. “When I see people who are carving I tell them ‘please sign it because when you are gone, no one will know who you are’”, says Roy, who knows that some Westerners like to dismiss the value of Africa’s ancient works on the grounds that they are unsigned.Largest gemstone beads and jewelry making supplies at wholesale prices. She also rebuffs suggestions that Africans of old didn’t commission art and points detractors to communal commissioning. “You want a masquerade and you go to the carvers and say what you want made for a particular occasion; what’s the difference between that and modern commissioning?”, she asks. And when others tell her that Africans didn’t hang their paintings on walls, she fires back: “Why do I have to look at my art the way you look at yours to call it art?”

Roy suggests that African shrines form the basis of some conceptual arts of Europe, observing that “they are taking the ideas, making their work from it and calling it Modern European Art.” In her view, all these illustrate why Africans must promote the importance of their own artistic expressions. She says of life Britain: “When you are in this country, you realise how much they look down on you and you know that the only person who can hold you up and say ‘I am something’ is you.”