Oshilaja Hemsley
Oh began her art career at Hornsey College of Art in London. After gaining her degree in graphic design, she went on to have a fifteen-year career as an award winning art director in advertising, working in various international agencies in London, Lagos, Nairobi and the Far East. A major launch for a clothing company led to a series of commissioned works of art which awakened her artistic abilities and interest in colour. After a couple of years freelancing, she returned to London with several private commissions and took to painting full time. As a self-taught intuitive painter, she developed her own language and found her voice in her chosen medium of soft pastels on paper. Oh has exhibited internationally and her shows include mixed and solo exhibitions in Lagos, Istanbul, London, Los Angeles, Miami and New York to name a few. Her paintings are also housed in corporate collections in Nigeria and Togo and she has received several prominent awards including Best New Artist for the International Art Business Symposium, Certificate of Recognition by World Contemporary Art and First Prize in Pastel category for I Am Group Inc. Florida.
She has used her experiences over the years to successfully run her own studios, and regularly opened up her home to clients for art suppers and solo exhibitions. Recently, she secured a permanent showcase in the award-winning restaurant at the Mount Haven Hotel in Cornwall, UK, and also has a works hanging in their healing room.
Having always believed in the therapeutic qualities of the creative process, she has begun studies in Theta healing techniques which she now incorporates into her work. This has allowed her to broaden her skills in painting visionary landscapes, and “reading” spaces for private commissions. Ultimately, Oh’s work encompasses the colour of nature and the colours of the human spirit, allowing the viewer a very inclusive and immediate relationship with her work.
As every painting is a spiritual journey… a meditation on emotional release, her process allows her to see beyond the physical…to enter other realms and journey through expanded visions of consciousness. Oh says, “It takes me to a world infused with colour and light, symbols and etheric forms… it allows me access into broader visions from a higher perspective.
Form emerges in my work through the layering of colour, a technique which renders a translucent, metamorphic quality to the pastels. Through the visible strokes of my working process, there is a vibrancy and rhythm that’s wholly sensual… a timeless and contemporary feeling of movement in each painting, reflecting and celebrating the constant transformation of our soul journeys.”
