Bara Sketchbook is an emerging visual artist based in Kaduna, Nigeria whose work has strong roots in impressionism and neo-expressionism. His early works is a documentation of aesthetics which he found in human nature and his experience as a human being.

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The artist’s strong interest in identity and its relationship with colour is part of the reasons why he decided to quit law school to focus solely on making art. He firmly believes that colour would have no relevance if not for identity, thus he stages his subjects and renders them in a state that they are not classified by any social structure but are universal. His most recent works focused on identity with an emphasis on race, from the two points of their existence, birth and death.

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"My work, my art, my colors, my understanding of the human body, my fascination with movements, the relationship between movements and form, are the key elements you can find in any painting I have created so far.

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Growing up colors always seemed a little bit more to me. They possess a certain uniqueness, have their own voice they can be heard and I heard them, I realized that some of them go well with others while some don't and some of them can easily identify emotions and certain feelings that have been going through and are still going through my mind.

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My synesthesia allowed me to communicate this effectively while I create these paintings and having a strong cultural background, being raised by a Nigerian father and a Sierrialeonian mother, gave me a strong sense of who I was and where I was from, and how beautiful my people are. So my subjects were the people around me, my mother and her children. Documenting them has taken me on a journey of understanding the social intricacies of my people, what they represent, and their way of life.” Bara Sketchbook

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 EXHIBITION

2021 CFHILL SPACE in Stockholm 

2021 THE SILOS HOTEL Cape Town 

2022 193GALLERY Paris

2022 BERMEL VON LUXBURG Gallery Berlin

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