Mbuthia’s
blissful art at One Off Gallery
By Margaretta
wa Gacheru (posted 13 May 2018)
James
Mbuthia is a quiet, peaceful man. A pastor in fact. Yet as a painter, his
artwork eloquently conveys an idyllic beauty that’s only to be found deep in
the rural areas of the Kenyan countryside.
That is
where Mbuthia has ‘Conversations in Silence’ that one can currently hear or
rather see at One Off Gallery in Roselyn. The artist paints a picturesque vision
of pastoral landscapes and lovers nestled into the green fields that tend to be
rolling, and either terraced or adjacent to river banks.
James paints
beautiful people who are clearly coming out of his warm imagination since they
are invariably multicolored, never simply brown, black or pink. He’s a master
at making transnational beings who transcend national boundaries and ethnic
variations. That’s because he truly has transcended issues of ethnic strife in
his own head and instead concentrates on using his art to share messages of
hope, enlightenment and healing.
James worked
for years as a backbone back-up man at RaMoMa Gallery where he’d been hired to
work closely with local artists and also to bring a select few with him to work
with terminally ill children at several Nairobi Hospital.
RaMoMa has
sadly disappeared, leaving One Off Gallery in its wake. But James is still
going to the hospitals every day to offer art classes and hope to small
children who are blessed with the new knowledge that they too have art in them,
a lesson they learn from James and the other Kenyan artists who accompany him.
James is
said to have a peculiar and rare condition, the name of which I never recall.
But it’s all about his sensory experience and the transposition of hearing,
seeing and feeling. For instance, James says one reason he loves to venture
into spaces where lots of birds reside is because he enjoys their birdsongs and
especially likes to translate the songs into colors and whole paintings.
Whatever that
condition may be, it works well for the artist who apparently paints exactly
what he feels, which is more surreal that super-real or even fantasy.
However he
works and is able to put paints to canvas, it’s masterful and visually
melodious certainly. It’s true that there’s a sense of harmony to his art which
leads some critics to say he paints hues of happiness, which I’d concur with.
There was just
one peculiar problem on the opening afternoon of James’s exhibition. It was
that one apparently needed to get to One Off early in order to see the glorious
art that he’d produced over the past two years. Otherwise, several art lovers
showed up and claimed that had to take their selections of his paintings
straight away. They couldn’t even wait for the opening day of the show to end
as they “had a plane to catch.” It meant that One Off’s Carol Lees didn’t have
a moment to rest since she’d never let an empty wall last for long, especially
on such a special day. So Carol and her assistant had lots of hanging, wrapping
and rehanging to do for James’ glorious show.
But there
was even a problem for the early birds who couldn’t stay all day since Carol
brought out paintings that hadn’t originally fit into her brand new pearly
white studio space before the walls went bare (due to those determined
departing buyers). So the late comers got to see a whole other exhibition. Of
course, nobody was complaining, except for maybe me!
But
fortunately, I was on hand to see some of the latter works that quickly got
hung and which somehow seemed even more appealing than the ones now gone.
One had
better get over to James’ show before it’s gone at the month’s end, or rather
when Carol hangs her next exhibition which will be of the art of Timothy Brooke
if I’m not wrong.
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