Into The Deep End of Leisure

The Spark | Ignite/Connect/Achieve
www.thesparkng.com
Freestyle
Freestyle:
With Josh Egesi
By Ayandola Ayanleke
Josh Egesi is a Creative/Multipotentialite who has worked on different
projects, directed a few others, worked with different art medium and
The creative, who admitted to still exploring his abilities, communicates
people’s story as well as his through every creative way there is. “I paint,
sculpt, Design, Illustrate, make videos, take pictures, Sing and do so many
other things.”
Speaking about how he started, he has this to say, “I started off as a child
imitating his elder sister. She was good and I loved her drawings and
paintings too. I didn’t really grow up as an artist. I grew up as an innovative
child always trying out new things from visual art to performing art and
even tech.”
“I just wanted to make everything work, give life to everything, a new
definition, nothing was ever dead to me, they just shifted existence and I
could see and understand them in their new existence. This continued into
my secondary school days.”
“I was the best in the Arts, my parents loved that I could do things with my
hands and they encouraged it. My dad once scolded me for not helping a
neighbour out with her art assignment. I actually grew up wanting to be
an Automobile Engineer until the day I saw what I had planned to invent
in a Sci-fi movie.”
“That immediately shifted my focus to visual art, unknown to me that it
was just a Science fiction and I could have been the one to invent a roofed
bike that could hover.”
“I continued into a Polytechnic (Auchi Polytechnic) in Edo state, known to
have produced most of Nigeria’s finest Visual Artists and then the
University of Benin where I graduated with a degree in Art and was made
popular for creating the biggest bottle cover portrait in Africa as my final
year project.”
“After my short fame I failed to meet the expectations of people as they
thought I’d continue working with bottle art. However I couldn’t continue
because it was never about the style but was more about the message of
Recycling/Upcycling, Innovation and Creativity.”
“People work with me because I have proven to make the best out of
6
@thesparkng