Sangolaja Osunkunle OnaKomaya

16/12/2025

12/12/2025

🌺 Osa Meji — The Cotton Tree 🌺 work in progress

This painting is inspired by the sacred Ifa poetry of Osa Meji: The Cotton Tree.

The red silk cotton flower carries :

✨ Edible & Healing Properties
Its unopened buds and calyces are cooked as delicacies in parts of India, and used in teas in Myanmar for cooling, calming, and nourishment.

✨ Cultural Significance
Honored as the official flower of Guangzhou, China, it symbolizes courage, resilience, and the rise of the human spirit.

✨ Spiritual Presence
In folklore across Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia, the silk cotton tree is known as a dwelling place of spirits — a sacred tree that connects heaven, earth, and the unseen realms. A protector. A witness. A portal.

In this work, I’m honoring all of these layers — the medicine, the myth, and the mystery — carried in every bright red bloom.

Sangolaja Art Studio

09/12/2025

09/12/2025

This piece…
is a whisper from the unseen.

A story woven in light and shadow,
guided by Osun’s sweetness,
and carried by the quiet devotion of her bees.

Every line, every colour
came like a message—
a reminder of power that grows in silence,
beauty that rises from struggle,
and guidance that meets you exactly where you stand.

This painting isn’t just art…
it’s a doorway.
A reflection of the Ori,
the destiny,
the becoming.

And if it speaks to you…
if you feel that pull in your chest or your spirit…
then this piece has been calling your name long before today.

I’m simply honoured to be the hands
that brought that message into the world.

02/11/2025

Medium: Oil Pastel on Paper
Artist: Sangolaja

01/11/2025

Iyanifa

Oil pastel on pastel paper

01/11/2025

In Bloom
Oil pastel on pastel paper
Sold

01/11/2025

✨ Full Moon Ritual✨

Here she is by the river beneath the glow of a full moon — releasing her prayers to the waters through her sacred calabash. Each offering carries intention, surrender, and faith, flowing with the rhythm of creation.

She absorbs the blue of the river, the colour of truth, intuition, and divine calm, becoming one with the essence of spirit itself.

A sacred serpent rests upon her shoulder — a messenger and guardian — using his Aṣẹ to transcend and transform her prayers into energy that moves through the universe. 🌊🐍💫

🎨 Oil pastel on paper

01/11/2025

Commissioned piece

The prayer room

A lot of ancestral support showing themselves in this piece.

Work in Progress

01/11/2025

Currently showing at the Rotunda Art Gallery of Trinidad and Tobago. Till November 14th

Our heritage is a vast and sacred tide, carried across waters and reborn in the Caribbean. Mama Wata, the Mother of Water, journeyed from her ancestral home across the Atlantic, transforming into Mama D’Leau, Mama Dio, or Mama Glo within the Caribbean diaspora. She made her home in our rivers—guardian of the waters, protector of the creatures that dwell within, and fierce defender of balance alongside Papa Bois.

In this painting, she is rendered in deep shades of blue — the colour of water, intuition, and spiritual depth. Blue speaks of divine communication, tranquility, and the unseen realm of spirit. It mirrors the stillness of her wisdom and the vastness of her power. With her eyes closed, Mama D’Leau communes not with the physical world, but with the spiritual one — listening to the murmurs of the river and the ancestral voices that flow through her.

The snakes that crown her hair and rest upon her shoulders are sacred messengers, carrying prayers and offerings to the ancestral realm. Through them, she receives the devotions placed in her waters — bottles of rum, coins, calabashes of fruit, words whispered to the river’s edge. Each offering is transmuted through her into spiritual currency, manifesting healing, wealth, and fortune for her devotees.

Yet, like the river itself, she embodies duality: fierce and gentle, nurturing and destructive, mysterious and revealing. She reminds us that the sacred nature of water is both life-giving and cleansing — capable of birth and erasure.

In this rendition, the sacred calabash floats toward her, glowing with the energy of human faith. She receives it through her serpentine children, who transmit the essence of each prayer to the ancestral realm for manifestation. Her calm, blue face signifies surrender to divine flow — an eternal reminder that when we honor the waters, the waters honor us in return.