As a child in his native Nigeria, Columbus painter Said Oladejo-Lawal used to play with the paint charts his father, a house painter, received from paint companies.
“I would just open all these charts on the table and be looking up colors,” Oladejo-Lawal said.
Today, those colorful paint charts echo through Oladejo-Lawal’s brilliant-hued canvases of musicians and dancers aswirl in the act of making their art.
Solo exhibitions by Oladejo-Lawal and northeast Ohio painter Linda Hutchinson, now on view at Worthington’s McConnell Arts Center (MAC), offer distinctly colorful and uniquely musical takes on people doing what they do. In the MAC’s Main Gallery, Oladejo-Lawal’s My Voice and Dance features portraits of musicians and dancers in action. On display in the MAC’s Corridor Gallery is In Good Company, an exhibition of figurative paintings by Linda Hutchinson, based in Brimfield Township. Both exhibitions run through Aug. 28.
Oladejo-Lawal’s and Hutchinson’s work covers similar terrain—the people they encounter in everyday life. But each artist communicates this subject matter in a distinctive creative voice.
“Their takes on portraiture are different, yet similar,” said Michelle Tavenner, the McConnell Arts Center’s director of artistic programming and education, who curated the exhibitions with the center’s education manager, Lindsay Lisanti. “Both of them, in their artist statements, talk about watching others, watching humans go about their daily business and their daily activities and tasks, and finding the joy in that.”
Joy abounds in Oladejo-Lawal’s canvases, which portray musicians in the spirited act of playing violins, cellos and double basses. Bright colors, bold shading and swirling brushstrokes lead the eye through a frenzy of activity.
The musical theme in Oladejo-Lawal’s work comes from his early years in Nigeria, where his father collected records, and where music filled his family’s home.
“It brought up the question of, okay, we’ve always heard music – how about being able to relate to music on a visual level? How about seeing music? How about seeing the emotions on canvas? So, this led me to this quest of painting music, painting classical musicians, painting string players,” Oladejo-Lawal said.
Today, Oladejo-Lawal loves classical music and jazz and constantly listens to music while he paints. Music, he says, guides him through his creative process.
“Now I have music everywhere—in the house, in the basement, in my studio. I have my online streaming. I have a turntable in the studio, a CD player in the studio,” said Oladejo-Lawal. “It just creates a certain kind of depth to my thinking about the process of my work. I need to have music playing just to make my journey through that work more interesting.”
Music is also a theme in Linda Hutchinson’s exhibition In Good Company.
“I love painting musicians because they are hand, heart and head,” Hutchinson said. “I admire those who feel the music, create a rhythm.”
In her artist statement for In Good Company, Hutchinson writes that she finds herself “delighted by the positive energy” of the people she encounters in her weekly rhythms. Amid the rhythms of life, Hutchinson says she aims to create visual rhythms in her canvases.
The human figures in her painting Curiositas, for instance, repeat across the horizontal plane like the steady beat of a drum.
In other paintings, Hutchinson shows musicians actually making music together. In Boston Beat, she joins the physicality of the forms of two musicians in the canvas as the musicians join their musical lines to bring music to life.
“I like how their body parts relate to each other. You can almost see the integration of their two instruments playing together. I tried to recreate that visually,” Hutchinson said.
Both Oladejo-Lawal and Hutchinson have had individual works exhibited previously at the MAC, though the current exhibitions mark each artist’s first solo exhibition there. Hutchinson’s work was displayed at the MAC in 2022 as part of the MAC’s Worthington on the Walls juried exhibition of work showcasing scenes from Worthington or created by Worthington artists. Oladejo-Lawal’s work took Second Place in the 2023 Worthington Arts Festival, which the MAC produces in partnership with other local organizations.
The musicality in My Voice and Dance and In Good Company shows the human subjects in Oladejo-Lawal’s and Hutchinson’s paintings in all their vitality and vibrancy. That vibrancy, in turn, is the essence of music itself—the human heart and its limitless capacity for kindness as life clicks along.
“Each of these people seemed so genuine, so very genuine. Recently, I’ve been very aware of how many people treat me kindly, and I hope to do the same,” Hutchinson said. “Those are acts that move me. The people in these paintings have moved me in some way.”
My Voice and Dance, paintings by Said Oladejo-Lawal, and In Good Company, paintings by Linda Hutchinson, are on view through Aug. 28 at the McConnell Arts Center in Worthington.
