About this artwork

“If you enjoy the fragrance of a rose you must accept the thorns which it bears” Isaac Hayes
Life’s roses and thorns, sometimes it emanates sweet aroma of pleasantness and sometimes it pricks and causes pains. O. Yemi chooses to do series of Roses and Thorns paintings in which main objects of the paintings are roses woven into human figures.
In this Rose and Thorns painting, O. Yemi chose to spotlight an American sensational artistic gymnast Simone Biles: The Blooming Rose. As it often says “no pain, no gain”; before she started to smell the roses of successes she would experience the thorns of challenges and trials like injuries in training and competitions.
In preparing for this painting, O. Yemi researched about this American Blooming Rose to give him insight into her life. Simone was given up by her mother when she was just two, and she was shuffled into various foster care programs before being adopted and raised by her grandparents. Doubtlessly, those were the thorns of her life. Rosy time of her life so far was the 2016 Olympic Games in which she was the most decorated gold medalist in world championship gymnastics history. This is what O. Yemi depicted in this painting.