Posts in category: art exhibits

Exhibition by Moses Nyawanda

About
Moses Nyawanda is the last born of eight children. When Nywanda was young his mother prophesized he would become an artist. Little did she know that her prophecy had been fulfilled the day when Moses was caught sketching by his math teacher. The sketch was so good that poor Moses got a thorough thrashing after the teacher recognized himself.

After grappling with several artistic practices from photography, sign-writing, and painting calabashes, Moses eventually attended formal art classes at the Creative Art Centre in Nairobi. In three years, Moses graduated with a diploma in fine arts and held his first solo exhibition at Yaya Centre. Over 15 years later, Moses has held numerous solo shows, won several art prizes and has been an artist in residence at Kuona Trust, the GoDown Arts Centre and the Railway Museum Art Studio (where he was a founding member). He now works from his home studio and shows his work around East Africa and the world.

As part of giving back to society, Moses works with the Trust for Indigenous Culture and Health (TICAH) in Nairobi where he paints murals with positive messages for communities and mentors young artists.

Moses has this to say about his current artistic practice:

“At the moment, my medium of choice is oils. Over the years, I have developed a style of painting where l use a palette knife to produce layers and layers of paint so the work ends up looking like it was done with pastels. I’m currently working with vibrant yet earthy colors with subjects of people or animals. The themes I’m exploring are the interactions between people or animals as they are put into stories or situations. These storylines are usually informed by current events or personal experiences, some true, some imaginary, others fiction. I’ve investigated dating, relationships between people, sexuality, generational divides, divergent opinions, politics, corruption, love, technology and fear. These have been done in series.

I like to imagine and paint what would happen to the subjects in my work (people or animals) if they had to work through different situations, what would they say, what would they do, what would happen? Throughout this process, I look to strip apart the visual scene that emerges in my mind and put it back together in ways that reveal many different layers of reality, of thought and emotion.”