CLAVERS DIPS INTO ART HISTORY FOR INSPIRATION

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted June 13, 2023)

Clavers Odhiambo is currently having his first solo art exhibition at Alliance Francaise. It’s a surprise that he’s taken so long to have his own one-man show since he’s an artist of notable talent who made a name for himself just as soon as he made his first public appearance at the Kenya Art Fair back in 2015. He has only eight paintings in his exhibition entitled ‘Tinted Glasses’ but every one is masterfully painted by this artist who immediately made his name as a hyper-realist. “I fell in love with realism during my days in secondary school,” Clavers tells BDLife soon after his opening on June 8th. One of the few Nairobi artists who had the good fortune to study art and art history in high school, he went on to University of Nairobi where he majored in Design.

“I think I’ve always been an artist so I went for the illustration side of design. But I’ve found that what I learned from studying graphic design has also been valuable in my art,” he adds. Clavers went straight into painting upon graduation from UON in 2014. But since then, he has mostly been in group shows, completing commissions, or researching the Renaissance and Baroque artists that he most admires, like Leonardo da Vinci, Johannes Vermeer, and Caravaggio, all of whom are reference in this ‘Tinted Glass’ show.

What is amazing is the way that referencing is done. One need not know that a particular gesture, object, or facial feature derived from Clavers’ affinity for a specific painting by one of these internationally acclaimed painters. But once he shares that ‘secret’ with me, I feel he has unlocked even more appreciation for this man’s creativity. For he isn’t simply copying Vermeer when he paints a young woman pouring water from a ceramic pitcher into a bowl. He does give his work the same title as the Dutch master gave to ‘The Milkmaid’. But the model is dressed in contemporary attire and she is pouring water, not milk.

“I know she’s pouring water, but I wanted to use that title,” Clavers admits once I asks if he had erroneously entitled his work. It turns out he was intentional in his emulation of Vermeer. But one doesn’t need to be familiar with Vermeer’s ‘Milkmaid’, despite its being an artistic icon. But it lends interest to the direction that Clavers is taking, dipping into art history for inspiration. That’s true for every one of his eight paintings, although there is one that he says references a contemporary feminist photographer-artist named Clio Newton. I was frankly more interested in finding out how he’d referenced Leonardo so he showed me that one. Hung just next to the ‘Milkmaid’ at AF is the same model that we see in every one of his paintings. “Gertrude is her name, and no, she is not my muse. She is a professional model who agreed to do a bit of modeling for me,” he says, adding that she wore her own jewelry and chose her own clothes. However, one can assume he had a hand in selecting the skirts that had such a warm, rippling flow and texture for him to paint. Her attire is simple but elegant. She is the picture of grace and beauty, and she was Clavers’ pick.

“Previously, I would choose images off the internet to paint. But in 2021, I had gained enough confidence in my work to start creating my own [visual constructions],” he adds. For instance, while studying the innumerable sketches of Da Vinci, he found one of a woman, Ginevra, holding her arms in a way he found especially appealing. So, he sketched that gesture for his own work. It’s the one he calls ‘Gertrude as Ginevra’. One can appreciate this sensitive painting which finds Gertrude looking thoughtful and tender-hearted, although I couldn’t quite see why she’d be holding her arms that way without having a baby or a puppy between them. Never mind!

Caravaggio is the Baroque artist that Clavers likes a lot. So much so that he painted ‘Girl with a Basket of Flowers’ after one of the Italian painter’s well-known works, entitled ‘The Boy with a Basket of Fruits’. Again, one doesn’t need to know anything about Caravaggio to appreciate Clavers’ attention to detail in his creation of Gertrude’s skirt and in the still life of the colorful Kenyan cut flowers overflowing from her basket.

Clavers’ exhibition runs until June 25th so dash to see it before it disappears.