Inspiration can come from one’s own history.

This is true for painter Odili Donald Odita, who recently gave a lecture at the Wexner Center for the Arts Thursday.

Born in Nigeria and raised in Columbus, Ohio, Odita lived in what he calls a “Nigerian bubble.” At home he was surrounded by Nigerian food, dress and culture, but whenever he left he found himself in the middle-class environment of Columbus.

Odita said this made him understand that there is more than one reality. The idea is prevalent in his work, which he said “incorporates multiple layers of reality.”

Odita came to Ohio State to lecture about his career and work to students and professors.

Throughout his career he traveled and showed work in a multitude of places, such as South Africa, New York City, Switzerland and Poland. He currently has a show in Cincinnati at the Contemporary Arts Center called “Flow.”

Not only was he raised in Columbus, but he is a Buckeye. Odita graduated with Distinction in the Arts from OSU in 1988 before attending Bennington College in Vermont to earn his Masters of Fine Arts.

His father, Okechukwu Emmanuel Odita, is a professor of history of art at OSU.

At OSU he studied art under professors such as Pheoris West, associate professor of art, who recently guest curated an exhibition that ended Feb. 14 at OSU, called Beyond these Walls: Department of Art Biennial Alumni Exhibition, according to the College of the Arts Web site. This exhibition included work by Odita.

“Pheoris has definitely helped me,” Odita said after the lecture. He said West helped him experiment with different kinds of paints and color.

Odita lives in Philadelphia where he is an associate professor in the Tyler School of Art at Temple University.

Odita’s lecture included a timeline of his work and explained the progression that took place throughout his career. He said he wondered at one point if “maybe painting is dead.” He said he “dealt with cultural and identity politics” at this time and also wrote for a magazine that discussed African art.

He later returned to his original and current specialty, painting, as he asked the question, “Why not make paintings again?”

“The rest is my history,” he said.

He currently works in wall and canvas paintings. His wall paintings are eye-catching, wall-sized works of brightly colored lines that he said have “a landscape that’s founded through the paintings.”

“It’s like being some place,” he said.

Carolyn Cypret can be reached at [email protected].