“Footstep Guide”: The Adventurous "Walk" of Bruce Onobrakpeya

Abstract

Walking suggests motion, movement, and a non-static state. Although walking is in the domain of psychomotor, however its operations transverses and permeates other domains such as Cognitive and Affective. Walking in life begins with a step which could be ignited by Cognitive calculations, while  the affective cultivation driven by dream is responsible for the dynamics in the walks of individuals. Ogunfuwa captures it in his the poem "Footstep Guide", "Ahead, now look! A thrust in conquest be. Step guide to excellent adventure. Fear not, footsteps shall plant wisdom in few", Artist life is a walking life, a sojourn into the world of creative ingenuities without return. This paper therefore reviews and traces the "Footstep guide", stages of "Creative Walking" of one of the most documented and oldest practicing artists in Nigeria and one of the most leading artists in Africa who turns 90 this year. Each decade in the last 60 years of Bruce Onobrakpeya is a walk into experimentations of a new form of art. A compendium of art and culture whose creative journey is captured in 3 stages of "Footstep Guide", trained as a painter in 1962, walking with vigour into printmaking, navigating into plastography, additive plastography and collagraphy. This last decade witness his untiring quantum leap and adventurous walk into three dimensional arts of metal and plastic sculptures. Onobrakpeya is a "culture protagonist" walking in the regalia ornamented with experimentations. An attempt is made to review the different stages of his transformations and its implications on Nigeria art and artists as walking of discovery of media and forms.

Keywords: Walking, experimentation, Foot-guide, navigating, chameleon.