Barrister Ogueche Ire Chinasa was born in Adaba in Uzo Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State, Nigeria. He studied Painting at the Institute of Management and Technology (IMT), Enugu. He also studied law at the University of Nigeria (UNN) and was called to Nigerian Bar as solicitor and advocate of the Supreme Court of Nigeria in 2008. He holds a masters degree in fine art from the Demontfort University, Leicester, England, United Kingdom.
Ire is currently a chief instructor in painting at the Enugu State College of Education Technical, Enugu, Nigeria. He is the CEO of Jesseyloyds African Art and Craft Gallery, Enugu, Nigeria. He has participated in many international and local art exhibitions and conferences.
Zuma Rock: Nature’s Art Gallery
Art is everywhere around us. Even ourselves does constitute some form of art as well. Oftentimes, we regard art as things that only comes from the handiwork of talents and geniuses of gifted human beings. ButMother Nature through an interlay of forces of natural sciences, does compete, if not direct the course of human artistic creativities. AsLeonardoda Vinci once stated, “…streaked patterns in stones could create inspirations that are capable of starting a point for some extraordinary art”. A focused gaze under an intense mental concentration on these natural formations no doubt yields revelations of landscapes, battles, clouds, uncommon attitudes, humorous faces and draperies. Writing on aesthetics, Alberti stated, “So let’s take from nature what we are going to paint, and from nature we choose the most beautiful and worthy things”. This defined art as an imitation of nature.
Zuma Rock, located in Nigeria is one of such wonders of nature’s artistic creations. The rock is credited with being the abode of many ancestral gods and deities. Whether Zuma Rock’s artistic creativities are accidental or pre-meditated by some forces beyond human perception is immaterial for this paper. What is material however are the striking similarities between both human and the rock artistic creativities. The arts and compositions on the rock are innumerable. In this paper I have taken the time to really show that apart from the famous Human Face that the rock has been widely known for, there are multitudes of other compositions, faces and things yet undiscovered on Zuma Rock.