Halfway Love 3 by Olumide Ajayi
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: Ink and Acrylic on Canvas
Dimensions: 61 x 61 cm
Year: 2026
Price: $1200.00 USD
Status: available
There's a theory called "Halfway Love": It says the worst kind of heartbreak isn't when someone doesn't love you at all, it's when someone loves you in the late-night conversations. In the way they look at you when no one else is watching. In the moments when it's just the two of you and the world disappears. But they don't love you in the daylight. Not in front of their friends. Not when it gets hard. Not when staying requires sacrifice. They love you, 'Halfway'. And you spend months, maybe years, trying to convince yourself that 'Half" is enough. That someday they will love you fully. But here's what you must know: 'Halfway Love' usually destroys you slowly, because it gives you enough to stay, but never enough to feel secure. The right person won't love you 'Halfway'. They'll love you in the easy and the hard. In private and in public. In the Daylight and the dark. You deserve someone who doesn't need to be convinced, who chooses you completely, not conditionally. Halfway love feels like a situationship. Just enough to keep you, never enough to choose you, and slowly, that kind of love breaks you.
Why collect this work?
Two faceless figures overlap so closely that their heads form one dark mass, while contrasting floral garments keep their bodies distinct. The embrace therefore holds intimacy and self-erasure in tension, sharpening the painting’s question about partial commitment.
- Ajayi states that his practice addresses less obvious feelings in everyday life. Here, emotion is conveyed without facial expression, through entwined bodies, enclosing arms, and the uncertain boundary between two heads.
- On the bright field visible in the photograph, pale contours isolate the couple from flowers, circular motifs, and handwritten phrases. “Choose you completely not conditionally” confronts “is halfway enough?”, making the surrounding space read as a dispute rather than a backdrop.
- The catalogued ink and acrylic on canvas permit broad opaque shapes, fine outlines, patterned clothing, and writing to coexist. These distinct registers set bodily closeness against the directness of verbal instruction.
- The work is significant for how its image complicates its stated lesson: the embrace may register care, dependence, concealment, or several at once, resisting the moral certainty of the words around it.
About the Artist
Olumide Ajayi
Olumide Ajayi is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: Painter. Mixed Media. Based in Ibadan, NG.
Nationality: Nigerian
My work seeks to embrace complex feelings, giving them a canvas to breathe, shift, and resonate.
