The third edition of dusitD2 Nairobi Art Gallery was held on Saturday with prolific artists presenting their works for display and for sale. It featured both the established and upcoming visual artists.
More than 50 art pieces were showcased at the Den Pop out gallery with the art lovers being given opportunity to interact with the artists.
The monthly event, which also featured the work of visiting Ugandan painter Edward Wadimba, aims at supporting artists by giving them a platform to showcase their works free of charge to hundreds of art enthusiasts.
"The monthly exhibition is set to encourage creative freedom by eliminating the bureaucratic system that is being witnessed in brokers, middlemen and hosts of art exhibitions who tend to gain more than the artists themselves," explained co-host Charles Murito.
Murito is optimistic that the monthly exhibition will create an opportunity for young artists to sell their artworks.
Friday Kwema, a developing artist, attests to that through her first ever exhibition since she started painting in 2016. Through her piece titled Freedom, she uses butterfly as her subject on black canvas. Her piece describes an artist's desire to blossom and being able to express herself freely without interference from outsiders, explaining why she opted to use the insect.
“Generally, the struggle in the transformation of a butterfly is hard as they are held up in a cocoon. It had to break down the tissue of a caterpillar to become a colourful butterfly, which will be
able to fly as well as express its beautiful wings,” she explains.
The aspect of beauty is significant through her work, in which she incorporates rainbow colours on the wings of the butterfly with black background to depict the struggle.
Kwema describes the choice of material based on her experience and exploration, a point she elucidates further on her other two pieces, Music Love and Sea.
The financial economics student at Strathmore University admits her naivety in the world of visual art as a first timer who sources her inspiration from nature.
Robert Njoroge’s Strike mode series describes the agony felt when teachers go on strike. The mixed media piece shows children playing. He deploys grey and dark colours on the background of his paintings to depict the unknown future of these children while teachers are on strike. The Banana Art Gallery based artist explores the irony between public and private schools. His piece cries foul of the government and teachers' unending pay row that affects the education in public schools.
Njoroge derives his inspiration from the current happening with his subjects being women and children, who he says are his perfect choice in expressing of emotion. This feature is further portrayed on his piece 'El-Nino', which shows the impacts the rains have had on the society.
The dust depo Erick Sticky Mureithi also showcased his impressive art at the Den pop gallery. With his favourite piece, Sorry Mum, I Love Graffiti, reflecting on his personal life as a child growing madly in love with art. He uses three children as his subjects to tell the story of love of art.
Sticky paints the three children spraying eco-friendly graffiti as a way of expressing their love for art. He encourages parents to be conversant with their children's talent instead of rebuking them.
He also declares his love for use of acrylic on canvas. He says the material is easy to manipulate into the desired result. His others pieces are the Stuntman and Shake A-Leg, which show the dare-devil in every human to discover their dream.
Willie Wamuti, a Banana Hill based visual artist, advocates the through his pieces the rights of nature.
He dreams of life where wildlife will never become extinct because of interference by human activities such as deforestation, hunting and settlements.
His works, Sanding tall and Chargers, depict two unique jungle animals which are endangered - the elephants and the giraffe.
His subjects are curved from junk metals protruding on the board to show how they are being forced out of existence, though they are durable.
“I decided to use metal as my key a material for durability. Elephants and rhinos are strong animals struggling to survive amid external forces of extinction from the planet by poacher, unless something is done urgently. Metals will endure rust for a long time and my art will prevail as reference to the next generation on how the animal really looked like,” he states.
His pieces, Standing tall and Charger, use acrylic on board with the dominance of sand, brown and grayed background colours to depict the interference of human activities in their habitat.
Another artist to showcase her work was a 17-year-old former Brookhouse student Ketam Kay. She paints lion on black canvas with grey paint as well as incorporating it with the fabrics mostly from Africa to show Africa as an emerging continent.
Her piece backdrop is black, a choice she said was suitable for making the fabrics pop out.
Being a first time artist, she confesses her struggle to find identity of his art in the outside market, having come out of school recently.
Her other subjects are mostly animals like lion and cheetah, which represent Africa as a continent.
Also selling at the exhibition was Patrick Kinuthia's breathtaking chocolate paintings done during a previous dusitD2 chocolate festival. The proceeds of the art went to New Horizon charity.
Other artists who also showcased their pieces were Kuona based artists Gemini Vaghela and Freda Abuga, Nicholas Odhiambo, Jeff Magina and Freda Abuga among many others.
The prices of the pieces ranged from Sh5,000 to Sh500,000.