by Ife Olutayo
Temidayo ‘SDL’ Arise, known professionally as SDL, is a visual artist born and raised in the city of Ilorin, Nigeria. Growing up amidst the rich cultural tapestry of Nigeria and a growing internet culture, SDL’s artistic journey has been a profound exploration of emotion, self, memory, heritage, nature and identity.
With no formal education in the arts, he developed his artistic vision by studying the works of luminaries, art history, film, fashion, and literature through the internet and any resource he could get his hands on. SDL’s artistic journey has been marked by significant milestones, yet beyond the accolades and exhibitions, SDL carries a profound mission, which is to use his art to impact the world. With every artwork, he invites the world to embark on a profound exploration of their experience as humans and a new way of observing the world around them.
I conversed with the prodigiously talented artist SDL to talk about his life, artistic expression and prophecies.
Q: Could you speak about the spaces that drive you to create?
Since childhood, I’ve always had this almost obsessive drive to make something that satisfies this feeling I get, that I can’t really describe. But it keeps me searching & this informs the philosophy of my work, the concept of the endless journey, because that’s the truest parallel I can draw between the world I live in & the world I create. Every space drives me to create, physically and conceptually. I don’t think any existing entity can stub my ability to create because the space that exists for me is within. It’s a feeling I don’t know & an end I am ever searching for.
Q: What are your artistic inspirations, the places that inform what we see when we get an SDL painting?
I get asked this often & the answer I give sounds quite cliche, but honestly, everything. Passion is the one thing I haven’t lost as I’ve grown. This keeps me in love with the things around me, & keeps me observant and interested. I’m a lover.
I love things, from a sunset to a flower, from a butterfly to an animal I just discovered existed. The feeling that gives me the wonder of nature and the universe, the feeling I get when I see a great film, a great work of art, a great story or when I hear almost transcendent music. Things that people make where you can see the care in it, the true passion, this feeling that unravels, that heals, the feeling they felt that made them create that, that’s the feeling I chase, & I always want that feeling present in my work; the feeling of the sublime.
Q: I know that you also draw traditionally, but your main medium is digital. What does the medium offer you that others don’t really do for you?
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Growing up, I didn’t have access to a lot of things, but I did have one thing that taught me nearly everything I knew & know now: The Internet.
All of my sensibilities come from everything I consumed up until this moment. The things I gravitated towards.
I have always been drawing on paper, markings on the walls, and burning through sketchbooks.
Everyone knew I was an artist. My neighbours got me three bottles of paint for my 10th birthday and a couple of brushes. I got to work, I loved trying out something new. While I did enjoy painting & I made some paintings I was satisfied with; something about it didn’t just click for me. I went back to the pen, the pencil, the sketchbooks. I like lines. I like clarity, but maybe not every time. Perhaps the better word is the definition. 2017 & I discovered something called digital art from the forums on the internet that I frequented.
It was interesting to me, exciting even. I liked how some of the artworks looked & hated some of the others.
How the same medium could produce such drastically different results? I learnt Photoshop & occasionally when I got a break from secondary school, I would mess around with it. I drew with the trackpad and added some colours in, I showed a friend of mine & he couldn’t believe I had done that, seeing that reaction gave me this nod, ‘There’s something more to this’.
2020 arrived and I would retrace drawings from my sketchbook on Photoshop and Medibang, then add colour so it would become what I believed was artwork.
It was the pandemic, locked inside so I had much time to experiment and learn. As time progressed I naturally got better, studying more and more about art and other media along the way. I noted the things that made me feel, the work I loved, the work that spoke to me. I drew every day. I shared my work.
I got better.
I got commissions. I made some money. I got a drawing tablet. I drew every morning,
I drew every night. I especially loved working in the mornings, I still do. I made work I believed in, art that made me feel. It wasn’t great, but it was honest.
I kept putting it out. To me, I wasn’t making digital art, I had become an artist, I had been able to a degree, to define the feeling I’ve always felt from the moments of my life experience, through my art. I had found a thing that made my heart burn with passion.
It’s 2024, and I make all forms of art through multiple media, but I still draw digitally. I’m an artist, I’m not a painter. I can make a painting, & it’d be pretty decent. This is organic for me, I didn’t go to school for art, not even close. This is what found me. Can I make you feel through my art?
If I am an artist & I can make you feel, through this thing I put in hours to make, that I study to create, then who does the medium matter to?
Q: Given how much passion is expressed on your canvas, do you find yourself at times trying to experience and appreciate the world just as it is, without having to reinvent it? Do you find it overwhelming at times?
I have to appreciate the world as it is before I can reinvent it, it goes hand in hand for me now.
It’s never overwhelming because it’s only natural for me to do that; it’s kind of my way of showing gratitude to the world I live in. You know, by showing you the world through my eyes.
Q: I can see already that you are a man of many mediums and expressions. Are there any other mediums you’d like to explore outside of the ones you hold sway over?
I gotta learn the art of cuisine; I enjoy cooking. I only recently fell in love with it, spending a lot of time by myself, cooking for myself.
I want to get better at writing. I think I’m decent, but I have a couple of friends, masters of the pen, and they inspire me.
Maybe pick up an instrument, learn how to sow it’s endless the things you can explore.
Life is limitless.
Q: What is the process for creating an SDL? What is Idea-to-expression for you? What does it look like?
It’s spontaneous, the conceptualisation of an idea. It can come to me anywhere, in any way, whether I’m trying to think of it or I’m just going about my day.
Once I have the idea, though, it becomes a more diligent process of journaling, researching, and studying. I put together a gigantic mood board with references from as many mediums as possible.
Fashion, paintings, particular scenes from films, photographs– ones I took, some others that I caught from the matrix.
Then, I start to imagine, to sketch, the lines manifest, the colours manifest, the artwork is born, & then she speaks.
Q: I’m a big fan of your work. It has– as it has been oft described– an otherworldly feel, not so much dreamlike, but like something you’d find nestled in between the narrations in The Pilgrim’s Progress. It feels like you’re connecting our world to another, becoming a bridge that facilitates an exchange of culture and our wonder for their stories. Can you express why this style is one you’ve settled on at the moment?
Everything about my art so far has been organic. I don’t think I settled on this; it’s where I’ve found myself. Sometimes, I feel like it chose me.
There are moments I have created artwork, stepped back, and come out of my body for a bit to take a better look at it.
I can see in those moments that this work is beyond my human cognition, a spiritual quality of sorts.
I’m a world builder. I believe every true artist brings you into the world they can feel within them.
That’s the space you create from, and everyone’s world is different. That’s beautiful.
Q: Looking at the expression you’ve put out, there’s always some sort of story linking works or stories about solitary compositions. There’s battle, resistance, love, tenderness, loss of self, despair and commune all on display. I want to ask about a particular collection, Numinous Transits, which you released some time ago. What informed that story?
Numinous Transits was my first attempt at weaving my world together through a narrative. It was also my first large-scale body of work, 15 artworks. There was a story to tell, the story of a journey.
All these experiences you’ve mentioned are the experiences we go through on a journey.
I believe we are all on an eternal journey.
To find ourselves? To find God?
Love? Purpose?
It varies, but we’re always searching. I don’t think the end goal matters, the journey never ends & I don’t think it should.
Numinous Transits is the journey we all go on to find what we lost coming into this world, whatever that might be to us, whatever that may mean to us.
Q: How do you envision the landscape of the arts in the near future?
The future is here & we see it. We can see the kids who never got a chance to have their voices heard, finally having their art shown to the world & finding their people– realising their dreams.
There are going to be no limits, and the ideas will get bigger. The work will be visually jarring yet minimalistic. The sounds will be foreign yet ancestral.
The kids are dreaming, and the OGs are dreaming. The gates have been flung open; the politics is broken down.
There are no rules, nothing holding us back anymore. We understand the power we possess, as artists, and as people.
We’ve gone back to the past, the Renaissance, the Romantic era, the Modern art era, the ‘80s, and ‘90s, to find a key into the future, to push everything further.
Without fear.
Without limits.
Q: What’s the most unusual place you’ve gotten inspiration from for your work?
I’ll be real with you; I can’t really place my finger on it just because of how I get inspiration from everything.
Recently, I’ve fallen in love with microorganisms; I got to see some through a microscope.
Q: Can you talk about some of the challenges you’ve had to contend with working here?
Oh man, access. We want our art to be seen, to be heard, to be felt.
We is us, my community, all the kids just like me trying to push the game forward. Trying to find the right platform is a challenge a lot of the time. While social media can be a good access point, it wasn’t designed for the arts. Trying to get to the people we want to work with & learn from is a challenge. Finding the right spaces for the community to engage in here in Ilorin is a challenge.
It’s Law that there are going to be obstacles to greatness, it’s Prophecy that we will overcome.
Q: As an artist trying to push the bounds of expression here in Nigeria, how important are collaborations to you?
Collaboration is the heart & soul of a community, & community is the family home of creativity. I love to work with artists & creators, especially those whose work I admire. I’m a learner, I always keep my ear out. You learn a lot from collaboration. I love working with writers, they help me see my work in a different light.
Q: In your medium, there is an ability to reinvent and/or give new life to expressions from the past. Are there any other works in other mediums (cinematic, sonic or others) that you’d like to reinvent?
This is something I haven’t really mentioned to anyone aside from my closest friends. I want to make films. Animated films. I have some stories to tell. They’re going to be reminiscent of my paintings visually. I’m always going to try something different, no matter what it is I’m trying to do.
I’m a student forever; I can’t lose that. I feel like filmmaking is something I’m going to sit on for a while. I’m inspired by how René Laloux and Satoshi Kon shifted the mediums of animation and storytelling.
I have some of my own shifting to do, haha.
Q: What can we expect from you in the future?
Memoria.
Q: By way of an outro, what is your holy grail of art?
Fantastic Planet by René Laloux.
