On one of those days I spend hours searching for story ideas and convincing myself not to give up the search for that day, some images caught my attention. Wow was the first thought that came to my mind..... I could not stop staring for some seconds. I was in love. This artist was..... my goodness! There are absolutely no words but his works are stunning. I quickly shared the Twitter link to my colleagues. That was in September. And then I completely forgot about it. Like really. I got caught up with other stuffs and here was this idea buried deep in weeks of messages. Until a month later when the urgency for story ideas reached a peak I could barely sleep. I decided to scroll up on ideas I had shared and I found it. Yaay! Forgive my excitement but it's great to tell stories from Nigeria. So I kickstarted the process of an interesting story of this young man Alex Peter, a pyrography artist who does "amaaaaaazing" work. Pyrography means "writing with fire" and believe me this has been around since the dawn of recorded history. Creating images on wood via controlled heat. My super colleagues jumped on it and the process was easy thankfully. For Alex Peter, a trained accountant; art was like some hobby that he started when he was younger until a light shone and he thought hey, I could actually do something with this and that led him to fully kick off his art journey in 2016. So here is how the self-taught artist does it. He gets a board then uses a pencil, sketches his subject on the board, goes on to burn the image with a blow lamp after which he uses a razor blade or sand paper to carve out the patterns. The process ends by spraying with a fixative to stop the colours from running. Voila! Check out the art works below and tell me if it ain't the work of a genius. Nigerians forever making us proud with their talent. The 25 year old is only just beginning even after two exhibitions. We can't wait to see him on the world stage. *Smile*. He already is. He has done some work on famous African personalities. His future plans? He wants to open an art school where he can put up a gallery and promote pyrography.
Pictures courtesy: Alex Peter and Angela Ukomadu
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