Why is Art Worth Creating? An Interview with Semilore Delano
- Faramade Olaitan
- Mar 4
- 3 min read
Semilore Delano: “You can't plan for certain things to happen, things just fall into place”
Why is art worth creating? Why is it worth copious amounts of sacrifice and self-discovery?
Semilore Delano's simple answer is "art means living to me.”
Delano is a London-based artist from Lagos, Nigeria who studied architecture at the University of Cambridge. After graduating in 2020, Delano reflects on her struggles balancing a rigorous workload with her creative pursuits while at school, the impact of her recognition from Kettle's Yard Gallery and where she draws inspiration as an artisan.
Delano recounts that an Art Foundation course in London during a gap year after her A levels solidified her passion for art, but that she had always decided to study architecture in university.
“A lot of my life was spanning between both worlds of architecture and art, and I decided to do architecture for several reasons. I've always loved the built environment. I've always been attracted to how the body responds to different spaces. My passion for architecture was rooted in it almost being another facet of art as a practice,” she says.
“I completed the majority of my architectural work, but I decided to go back to art as my primary field of study and passion, and merge the two worlds again, but as an artist first.”
Delano admits that it was not an easy path however as she struggled to juggle both of her passions, making numerous sacrifices to keep both in her life.
She explains: “It was a lot of sacrifices that were sometimes at the cost of my degree, if I'm being honest and it wasn't something I was happy with. I was really trying to understand how I could use my art skill and knowledge within the architectural world. It wasn't until my final year where I felt like I was starting to get the hang of what it is that I care about.
“It meant I was doing a lot of late nights, a lot of early mornings. I was sometimes late from assignments. It wasn't balanced, but it was more like just trying to figure out what my priorities should be.
“I did what I could. I did what I felt like I needed to do,” she explains.
Despite the challenges she faced, Delano was the first student to be featured in the Kettle's Yard Gallery at Cambridge.
“You can't plan for certain things to happen, things just fall into place,” she says.
“I was at a point in my studies, where I was trying hard to retain my artistic work while studying and that breeds a lot of tension. Doing one thing is hard enough, but trying to do both at that age was very tiring.
“Getting that recognition from Kettle’s Yard, I wouldn't necessarily say it made it worth it, but it sort of assured me, it was kind of like getting a nod, to keep going, you're doing something right. It felt powerful.”
The artist expressed her joy in creating from what is around her, drawing on her heritage, culture and ‘Blackness’, enjoying working with oil paints, concrete and charcoal as her primary mediums.
Delano cited Two African Men by Rembrandt, the writings of Christina Sharpe and the abstract expressionist movement as well as Demas Nwoko as her sources of inspiration to her creative life.
“Demas Nwoko, his entire life and his philosophy behind creating work and what the value of making is. He built, he was an architect, playwright, he was a painter.
“That has been a fantastic inspiration for me recently. He is such a forefather within Nigerian history. I think he was light-years ahead of his peers in practice. I feel like discovering him now, where I'm at in my career is especially important, it's like seeing someone live a life that you can only imagine.”
Delano's favourite art piece of her own creation is Untitled Black Surface #, which marked a shift in her practice, and helped her through a difficult time during her studies.
“It was a piece of work that was not accidental but was something I never saw coming. I come primarily from a drawing and painting background, and that was always where I thought my voice and my strength of my work was based.”
She talks about how the piece challenged her at a time when painting was not as available to her during her master’s degree at Oxford.
Delano says creating is the only way she overcomes doubt.
“It's not something that's easily understood, and so it can be very hard to remember that it's worth the amount of doubts and tiredness,” she explains.
“It's a sacrifice actually, to make work and to make art."
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