Cultivated by Olamilekan Okunade
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 42 x 48 in
Year: 2026
Price: $4700.00 USD
Status: available
For so long, I believed that love and acceptance came from how much I chased people or sought their validation. Growing up was tough, and being single-handedly raised, I was afraid my situation would define me. I begged to be seen and constantly proved myself to people who never truly saw or cared about me. At some point, I began feeling less of myself. I became angry whenever I saw friends and family with both parents, even reopening my mother’s old wounds because, in my mind, it was her fault. I failed to understand that she was never the reason for my pain. Little did I know that I was chasing an illusion of who I wanted people to see while neglecting the person I was meant to become. Recently, I found myself among the same people I had spent years performing for. At a popular garden, I watched butterflies buzzing and dancing around a particular flower, and a thought suddenly struck me: If you had been that flower all along, you would have found peace. Instead of chasing butterflies, why not simply plant a garden filled with flowers? This piece is a metaphor for that journey. The colourful female portrait represents how much of myself I had given away, while the garden symbolizes my potential and originality after I stopped chasing and performing for the wrong audience. The golden butterflies represent everything I thought would complete me, love, affection, family, and belonging, which were finally drawn to the beautiful garden I had cultivated. This work is a reminder to me, and to every woman who has tiptoed, chased, and walked on a double-edged sword just to feel seen and accepted: plant a garden, and your butterflies will come, irrespective of where you are.
Why collect this work?
A gridded profile holds the figure together while flowers, birds and butterflies cross its edges, turning self-possession into a tension between cultivation and pursuit.
- Okunade’s statement connects his practice to women’s strength and social experience. Here, that concern is concentrated in a single monumental profile rather than a narrative scene.
- In the photograph, small angular blocks construct the face, neck and shoulder, while the eye, lips and hand remain sharply legible. Dense dark passages meet vivid flowers and a hummingbird; the figure appears both composed from fragments and continuous in outline.
- Catalogued as acrylic on canvas, the painting uses opaque-looking passages to separate adjacent blocks and crisp silhouettes. Acrylic makes such rapid shifts between geometric pattern, fine contour and broad ground possible, though the photograph cannot establish surface texture or exact colour.
- The artist describes the garden and golden butterflies as metaphors for cultivating self-worth rather than seeking validation. Encountering this work places that personal account beside a more ambiguous visual fact: growth gathers around a body that still bears its divisions.
About the Artist
Olamilekan Okunade
Olamilekan Okunade is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: painting. Based in Nigeria, NG.
Nationality: Nigerian
Geometry pattern| Constructivism Art| Pixilating Arts| Creating Piece with Acrylic on canvas Co-Founder @sipandpaintyourmentalhealth
