"When we meet, Olulode’s studio is filled with the monochromatic schemes she has become widely recognised for – green, blue, yellow. She even has a speck of yellow paint on her nose as she talks me through each piece (of which there are many). Her studio practically glows, full of the jubilant energy radiated by these paintings and Olulode herself."
Liv Little: I would love to hear about your choice of colour palette – why yellow?
Sola Olulode: Yellow to me is joy. My work has always been about people and relationships, but it’s been broad – it could be any kind of relationship, so [in this series] I wanted to focus on a romantic one. And I thought, yellow is like that intense feeling, that joy, and I was imagining that’s the moment that I’m capturing in a relationship.
LL: Black artists are often expected to mine their trauma. Why is it that you choose to celebrate joy over and above other themes?
SO: I think I’m just tired of that narrative. I’m more drawn to and focused on happier narratives. The work for me is like therapy – I’m painting things I’d like to see in the world, things I’m thinking through, things I want to experience... The darker side of the human experience is not something that I really find myself delving into when I want to create. Maybe it’s also about my personal experience in life – like, the thing that I am consumed by is joy. I want to have narratives of queer people, just solely experiencing the good parts of love. Obviously, relationships are messy and horrible sometimes, but I just wanted to focus on this beginning phase of a couple getting to know each other.
