Sokazo’s career has been a mix of hard work, commitment to technique, and happenstance. He believes in saying “yes,” staying curious, and keeping an open mind when entering into new projects. This openness has lead him to create rugs, sculptures (such as the one displayed outside a Vancouver Skytrain station during the 2010 Winter Olympics), an electric box outside the skate park in
Sechelt, humidors (one of which stands in Cuba’s Art Museum), wine bags and boxes, and many other vibrant and interesting art pieces. His art, wherever it is, is sure to transform the space with energy, depth, and intensity.
His teens and twenties were spent discovering life and travelling, exploring the world and gathering experiences. It wasn’t until Sokazo hit his thirties, when he finally became serious about his art. While he has created in watercolour, oil, and charcoal, he is primarily known for his vibrant, energetic acrylic pieces.
These beautiful pieces of contemporary abstraction start out as simple pencil-and-paper drawings. Sokazo sits down and starts to explore his imagination. “What do I want to say?” flows through his mind until a shape pops up and goes down on paper. Then that shape calls for another shape and another, until they create an exciting composition of undulating lines forming a dynamic creation. Only after the shapes go down does he moves onto his coloured pencils to fill in the lines. Colour has its own expression, its own language.
Once he likes the piece in pencil and paper, he transforms it to canvas. There he starts laying down the lines and now begins to feel how the piece wants to come to life. The dynamic of the drawing changes when he moves to canvas. He starts building in the layers, accepting feedback from the piece, and layer by layer, giving birth to the vision from his imagination.
And now a month has gone by. Medium to large pieces always take a month. The process and the time involved has stayed the same throughout the years.
Sokazo’s technique go straight from his imagination to his hand, to the canvas. He does not use any stencils or computer programs to create. The path of his artistic career has taken many shapes, just like his art, and each is filled with colour, depth, and enthusiasm.
Words | Natalie Findlay
