Elhadji Mamadou Faye, born into an artistic environment, began painting in childhood, initially drawing inspiration from African traditions and creating figurative scenes of everyday life. Attending the School of Fine Arts in Dakar enriched his skills in acrylic on canvas and various materials. While maintaining an African style, recent years have seen an integration of contemporary art techniques, especially influenced by the artist’s surroundings, with a specific emphasis on children and marginalized groups.
A significant aspect of his work involves light-dark techniques that distort observed reality. Focused on situations of marginalization, he transforms negativity into positivity through his art, aiming to evoke feelings of freedom and love in the audience. He sees his work as a means to capture negativity as “dead matter” within the artwork, allowing positivity to flow outward, creating visible impact on the viewer.
Natural darkness offered by night is the best source of inspiration for the painter where he transforms how we were taught to exist and see. Darkness, today, is reduced to the opposition of light where the former is associated with negative meanings such as death and fear. And yet, the painter reminds us, through his paintings, of the power of the darkness to reimagine reality and dream, nature and humans, and personality and identity. His use of vivid colours is provocative and disturbing from a distance and yet it shatters the boundaries of such divisions that imprisoned our capacity to touch what is real.
Elhadji Mamadou Faye embraces a boundary-less approach, offering new perspectives and scopes in
his paintings. The color palette ranges from light tones to nuanced ochre tones, and the technique involves energetic and concise brushstrokes, occasionally using fingers to generate movement and energy.
The overarching vision is to use art as a tool for educating the new generation about contemporary social issues in both urban and rural areas.