THE ONION (Allium cepa) BULB FORM AS A CREATIVE RESOURCE FOR PAINTING EXPRESSION

Résumé

This paper focuses on the onion bulb (Allium cepa) form as a creative resource for visual and contemporary artists across the globe. The onion is an edible bulb used as vegetable with a rounded edible bulb with hard pungent flesh in concentric layers beneath a flaky brown skin eaten raw or cooked. Onions are used widely for cooking. They add flavour to such dishes as stews, roasts, soups, and salads, and are also served as a cooked vegetable. The onion's characteristic pungency results from the sulfur-rich volatile oil it contains. Release of this oil during peeling brings tears to the eyes, but many cooks claim that tears can be avoided by peeling onions under running water. Over the past years, visual artists have in one way or the other experimented in painting with different themes like landscape, seascape, nature, man-made objects and animals and plants and crops to mention only but a few. Onions as a plant to some artists have been a source of expression in painting. These paintings have shown the creative ability of creative artists to explore the different types of onion forms and colours as portrayed in their paintings. It has also exposed the aesthetic beauty of the onion through painting with the qualities imbedded in it. The onions have now become increasingly a scare and very expensive commodity in our society Nigeria at this present dispensation (September 2020). This paper presents the onion for artistic expression and at the same time advocate that they also look at other types and forms of vegetables like garlic, Okro, cucumber, dates among others as creative resources for painting expression.