Osemwegie, an artist in black and white

A seemingly blank canvas stares out at Nigerian artist Vincent Osemwegie, daring him to make a move.

It is already tattooed in white acrylic spirals but from a distance all one can see is a moody white surface waiting to be coerced into something beautiful.

Raised in a polygamous family with 21 siblings, Osemwegie’s artistic journey has featured more detours than Robert Frost. Having ignored his mother’s warnings and studied fine art in his home country Osemwegie dabbled in modelling and acting before heading to South Africa in 2009 to try his hand at shop keeping and a host of other ventures.

“Everything I did failed —  it was incredibly frustrating,” he said.

He carelessly throws a flurry of pencil strokes at the canvas before adding, “It was only after I renewed my faith in God that everything started to go right again.”

His pencil disdainfully lunges forth again, leaving a set of shallow grey scars that resemble a face.

Osemwegie may get his talent from above but it was another muse that set tongues wagging at his first solo exhibition at Living Arts Emporium Gallery in Maboneng.

“Kitty Phetla is absolutely amazing. It is not just her beauty that inspired me but the amount of focus and training that goes into what she does,” he said.

Phetla was the first black ballerina to perform The Dying Swan in Russia and is the subject of a series of paintings he did featuring ballerinas that attracted the most attention at his exhibition.

Around us, artists flutter in and out of the Ellis Park Tennis club, a mausoleum of faded South African tennis greats. The clubhouse’s conversion into a gallery for up and coming artists gives one the feeling of having an LSD enhanced wonderland. Every nook and cranny screams for one’s attention but Osemwegie isn’t distracted. Numbed to the over stimulating decor, he carefully begins dripping ribbons of black enamel over his pencil blue print.

“This dripping thing originally started by accident. I was learning to do crosses and started doing them faster and faster which left this dripping effect behind. Someone came to me and said that it look really good so I just kept doing it,” he said.

As he speaks, A Cold Fire begins to take shape. Darkness creeps out his subject’s nostrils, cart wheeling across the canvas. A grey city space rears up behind it and to its right a group of hastily scratched figures wait for Osemwegie to light the fire that binds them. Their wait may be in vain.

“I’m not achieving exactly what I wanted with this,” he said adding that he may decide to throw a thick coat of white paint over it and begin again.

When I left Osemwegie, he was standing over A Cold Fire draping a wreath of black ribbons frustratedly wondering whether he should simply douse the whole thing.

• Osemwegie’s latest work, along with 10 other paintings from artists at the Living Arts Emporium, will go on auction on the 4th of July at the closing of the Nedbank Making a Warmer Winter Happen campaign