ARTIST
INSPIRED TO PAINT ORPHANS IN WESTERN KENYA
By
margaretta wa Gacheru (posted October 17, 2017)
Leevans
Linyerere’s first solo art exhibition just ended last week at the British
Institute of East Africa. He’s among a number of ‘young’ rising stars in the
Nairobi arts scene who’s taken advantage of BIEA’s rapid reorientation from
being an exclusively academic space to becoming more of a multi-cultural arts
centre.
Joost
Fontaine, the Dutch anthropologist currently holding the director’s post at
BIEA is the one responsible for opening his institute to new audiences as well
as new artists.
His
initiative has been especially welcomed by a band of talented graffiti artists
who are currently showing their work at BIEA. Their exhibition, entitled ‘Come
Witness the Rebirth: Afro-Renaissance’ opened last weekend, right after
Leevans’ show came down, on October 14th.
The six
‘street artists’ currently on display go by their nicknames. So there’s Swift,
Kerosh, Native, Wise 2, Sogallo and Kimani.
But just before
their artwork went up, Saturday Nation
had a chance to speak to Leevans who initially described himself as a
‘self-taught’ artist who was grateful for the mentored he’d received from
Patrick Mukabi starting from when Patrick was still at The Go-Down Art Centre.
He’s still based three days a week with Patrick at the Dust Depo Artists’ Studio
which the elder statesman of urban art founded back in 2015 at the Railway
Museum.
But SN chose
to explain to the 26-year-old that the term ‘self-taught’ has generally been
rendered obsolete and is frankly inaccurate. For whether one went to a formal art
school or not, every artist has been influenced by someone and several things
that have inspired them to take themselves seriously as an aspiring artist.
With that
clarification, Leevans admits he’d grown up watching his mother sketch and then
stitch her designs using a sewing machine.
“I used to
dash home after school and quickly complete my homework so I could go watch my
mom stitch and sketch,” he says. “I often tried to imitate her,” he adds.
Then once he
went to Kaimosi Friends Secondary School, he found art classes being taught.
These he took every year that he was there.
So while he
credits Mukabi with mentoring him on many artistic and logistical levels,
Leevans admits he had already learned lots of the basics about painting before
he found his way to the man most responsible for setting a multitude of local
artists on the path to professional careers.
It was while
working at Dust Depo several months back that Leevans met a Swiss graffiti
artist who was on his way to Western Kenya where he’d been invited to give a
workshop in Kisumu at the Korando Orphanage and Education Centre.
“On his way
back from his week-long workshop, he [the Swiss man] stopped by Dust Depo again
and encouraged me to go run another workshop for the children,” Leevans
recalls.
“I was so
inspired by the experience of working at the Centre with those kids that I
dedicated all the art in my [BIEA] show to them,” he says.
Splitting his
exhibition between figurative monochromatic drawings and colorful abstract
paintings, Leevans says he intentionally kept his realistic images of the
children in black and white while each of his abstract works was conceived
using colors meant to express the emotions contained in each of the partner
figurative paintings.
SN has previously
seen paintings by the artist in various group shows such as ‘Young Guns’ at
Circle Art, Manjano at Village Market, Nairobi Art Fair at Sarit Centre and the
KMS Affordable Art Fair which opens this year on November 3rd at
Nairobi National Museum.
In all of
these earlier exhibitions, what’s stood out was Leevans’ sensitive blending of
colors and delicate attention to detail. His BIEA show revealed that the artist
is trying out new styles, techniques and genres, experimenting along the way.
Currently,
he says he’s working with acid and black paint on thin sheets of brass. “I was
inspired to try painting on brass by my next door neighbor [in Komorock] who
makes brass badges for the Kenya police,” Leevans says.
Initially,
his neighbor let him take away his metal scraps. But after a while, the artist decided
to try using whole sheets of brass like a flat stretched canvas.
“Instead of
a brush, I use the acid to cut lines and create the designs on the brass,’ adds
the artist whose works will next be on display at the National Museum next
month at the Affordable Art Fair.
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