If you have ever encountered Fejiro Praise Oruoghor, you will admire her passion for the arts, particularly visual art.
The trained accountant turned artist, followed her passion for art and today she has grown entrepreneurial lines across her visual art career.
From being a self-taught artist, painting from her heart, she developed herself to become a sought-after art instructor by private schools and concerned parents.
As well, the ambitious artist is also a curator, with many successful creative shows to her credit and also runs an art brand called Artformng.
Tracing her journey in the art, Fejiro gives credit to her sister, a Fine Art graduate, who usually brings home her class assignments and projects and asks her to help out, though after putting her through on it.
“I ended up helping my sister to do her assignments. With that I began to pick interest in art and see it as something interesting and that I want to do,” Fejiroh says.
She also lives out the axiom ‘catch them young’ with her special way of getting around with children, helping them to pick interest in art at a tender age.
The above speaks volume of her passion and job as an art instructor. She works with many top notch private schools as an Art Instructor, teaching Art, inspiring young ones to become creative from a tender age and coaching the pupils and students in mastering drawing and painting skills.
Her skills are being appreciated by schools such as The Netherlands Embassy in Ikoyi, Pink & Blue in Victoria Island, Lextorah in Lekki, among others.
According to her, being an Art Instructor is also rewarding financially, job fulfillment and passion wise.
“Aside from painting, I teach the children the basis of art, colour mixture, different media and the rest.
“So far, the children can paint on t-shirts, drawing on canvas, I instruct them on how to hold the paint brush, how to manipulate and all that,” she notes.
Apart from schools, her art instructing skills are also sought-after by corporate organisations, which often invite her to spice their corporate timeouts with her creative impartation.
The impact and bounding created during her painting section with Cadbury West African staff members are still being felt till date by the company.
Parents also contract her for drawing and painting sessions during their children’s birthdays, to make the occasions remarkable.
She did the same at Imade’s birthday, first daughter of Davido, ace musician, among others, where she uses her artistic skills to inspire children to love art, draw and paint their environment.
With Artformng, (Artform Nigeria) her art brand, she does a couple of events both for adults and children, helping them to learn more about art such as painting and drawing, different techniques of art and how to explore them.
One of such events is collaboration with Tunde Onakoya, founder of Chess In Slums Africa.
Speaking on her work as an art instructor, Fejiroh explains that she did not have a formal training as an art teacher, but has perfected that through her extensive research on art and art instructor specifically.
“After my extensive research, I started working with different schools as an art instructor. My work as an art instructor is to help channel out the creative side of children, their artistic skills and help them to confidently bring it out,” she explains further.
While she has practiced art and been an art instructor for over seven years, she has also been a curator for three years now.
“I have curated a lot of exhibitions. There is one I did at the National Museum. I have also done a couple of assistant curatorial work at the Tree House Lagos. I worked there as a dance coordinator.
“The space is an experimental art space for artists to do their artistic work more like a residency and art exhibition space. I was the coordinator and assistant curator of the space”.
She also has good working relationships with a couple of artists. “I do studio visits with them to see their works,” she says.
Fejiroh has also worked in some galleries such as; CCA in Sabo Yaba, TreeHouse, Tiwani, Bloom Art and Art X Lagos.
However, bearing in mind the need to get formal training in art, she took time to learn from some art masters.
“I did a training of about five years with an art practitioner before I started working with children”, she says, while also working on getting a certification in Art Curating from QDot, a four-month programme.
But having been an art instructor for close to a decade, her joy is to see more of her students that will pursue art after their school.
