ABSTRACT ART TO REVIVE THE SOUL

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted october 29,2023) Mark Lecchini is one architect I know who doesn’t see a dichotomy between art and architecture. “After all,” he tells BD Life, “both are concerned with issues of composition and proportion, of harmony and balance.” With that in mind, one can understand how a man who builds homes that stand in the leafy suburbs of Nairobi can also be having his second solo exhibition at one off art gallery in rosslyn currently. It's true that he left a successful architectural firm in UK to return to the land where both his parents were born. But again, the man feels strongly that “There is art in architecture and architecture in fine art.” But to examine the giant diptychs that fill the walls of One Off’s stables gallery is not to see anything resembling a house, church, stadium, or amphitheatre. Instead, Lecchini’s art is perfectly abstract, giant exercises in the composition of color, curve, texture, and layers of oil paints. “I have to be totally relaxed in order to paint,” he says. He admits it’s not a frame of mind that he finds easily (if at all) in Nairobi. So, he rents a small cottage up at the Delamere Conservancy where he spends hours listening to Mother nature in all her diversity, music, mood, pulse, and vitality. His passion for nature is only equal to his love of music, specifically to jazz music, and the kind produced by jazz giants, men like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Theolonius Monk, and many more. “When I am not listening to nature, I am listening to them,” he admits, almost reverentially. He even listens to them while he paints, which can give one a clue as to what his abstract studies of color actually mean. He leaves meaning up to the viewer however since he strives to reach a transcendental sort of psyche where all logic and reason are ruled out so that all that’s left is pure emotion. “It’s the emotion I aim to paint,” he says, taking note of how different his abstract art is compared to his geometric brick homes, But there is nothing sketzophrenic about Mark’s approach to his style of living. On the contrary, he takes a more philosophical approach and notes the way the Stoics, over 2000 years ago, made more sense to him. A man like Marcus Aurelius described in his book entitled ‘Meditations’ how everything came back to Nature, or basically dust to dust. “I took the title of his book to be the title of this exhibition as well,” he says. ‘Meditations’ might be seen as a series of paintings that all reflect Lecchini’s contemplation of both the beauty of Kenya’s countryside and the elegant, improvisation of jazz saxophonists at the peak of their performance, which was basically in the 1960s in the US. “I was always listening to them as I painted,” he says, as if each of his strokes mirrored the mood of his favorite horn rising and dipping into delicious sounds that Lecchini sought to express emotionally through his paint. Explaining how his first layers of color were created by liquifying his paint with turpentine, thus giving his oils a water color effect on his canvas. He admits he would sometimes make sketches of his designs first, but he preferred letting the lines and curves come as they flowed. Then once he got the initial layers and colors as he wished them to look, he would now drop the turpentine and resort to linseed oil. The linseed would serve to enhance the depth of the oil tones and thicken the paint. So it is now that he will use various sizes of brushes to experiment with which strokes of color resonate best with his mood generated from his music and restful mind. All the names of Mark’s painting are taken from the titles of jazz tunes, mainly from Miles, but also from Coltrane and Monk. Most of them are diptychs, two painting bonded by theme and production. To some viewers who might not care to consider Lecchini’s philosophical approach to his art, his work might look like scratchy lines that a child might apply once they had a packet of colored crayons and pads of paper to mess with. But to the rest of us, one can actually feel the rumble of winds whispering in his ears as he put on canvas what he actually felt. Call it ‘Crystal silence’ or ‘Fire Waltz’, Lecchini’s abstract improvisations revive the soul.