By: Anna Ochwo & Ruth Styles

Published with courtesy by

http://www.africanwomanmagazine.net/

First Published 2007, Issue 15

Joseph Cartoon is telling me about the time he spent in the UK. In a weird, pseudo cockney accent. “Yeah man, it wors freezing,” he drawls. Winner of the prestigious Royal Award which takes five artists from the commonwealth and brings them to Britain to study and exhibit their work, Cartoon spent a year and a half in Bedford, a small county town about forty miles north of London. “I saw all weathers there, I mean, I’d never seen snow before so it was crazy…it was really cold.” But despite the cold, Cartoon managed to stick it out and is one of the most respected artists in Kenya today. He isn’t a big man, but he’s stocky and has a genuinely warm personality. He loves women and what they represent, and this passion permeates his work from small sketches to his biggest compositions.

POLKA DOTS & CURCULIES

“Women represent Africa, the different peoples, nations, cultures….everything! They have colour and passion….it’s just that women make Africa how it is.” He pauses for a breath, “and they’re so colourful as well. Women wear the most beautiful patterns, I mean, my mother does….some of it’s just like ´wow´”. His pieces tend to take the form of individual women or small groups of women in the midst of domestic chores, maybe not the most exciting compositions, but brilliantly eye catching because of the vibrant colours and those intricate patterns. Red, yellow, orange, blue and green shine through his rainbow like paintings with liberal doses of polka dots, squiggles, curlicues, arabesques, zig zags and stripes splashed over the top. The kaleidoscopic scenes are pure Africa, but it’s Africa at it’s most colourful. “Colour and pattern are some of the hallmarks of the African visual landscape; I mean, go and see the parks here and the cities. Everything just overflows with colour, from the fruit and vegetables in the market to the people. Africa is good at inspiring me.”

And Africa is something that has inarguably been present in his life from the start, in a small village in Kenya’s Ankot district. “I loved painting, in primary school,” remembers Joseph. “I liked business, history and geography too, but I was passionate about art, especially African Art.” A neighbour fostered the young Joseph’s interest and gave him his first materials and instruction. “He was my mentor,” smiles Joseph. “He gave me my start.” His village and the people who he lived with didn’t only give him a start with painting materials though. His family owned a tea plantation and the simple scenes of farming and village life which he saw as a child continue to permeate his work. “Yeah, village life really inspired me when I started,” he concurs. “I compared African village life to what I saw in Europe and I came to the conclusion that far from being the poor relation to the rest of the world, Africa actually has a very rich culture which deserves to be expressed visually.” Despite his talent, for a long time, Joseph was unable to practise his art due to that most omnipresent of hindrances; money. “It’s sad, but people often don’t understand why people want to paint and what they get from it, as well as finding it difficult to respond to a painting, so I’ve always had to do something else as well.” Now the owner of a transport company, Joseph has to restrict his painting to the weekends and whenever he finds time because “painting isn’t a reliable source of income and I have a young son to feed, so my business has to come first.” Nevertheless, Joseph has still managed to garner an international following thanks to his Royal Award and his exhibitions abroad.

A Veteran of the Royal Award and numerous international exhibitions, the bright colours of Joseph Cartoon are known and loved well beyond his native Kenya. Having exhibited in the U.K. and Europe, Cartoon has also held exhibitions in countries closer to home. “I did an exhibition at the Tulifanya Gallery in Kampala once,” he recalls. “It was a solo exhibition and it was nice to be welcomed over there. There are some amazing artists in Tanzania and Uganda as well as here. I mean, just look at Maria Naita, her work is fantastic.” Following his win, he put on exhibitions across the U.K., in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. “Even though it was freezing the whole time I was there, it was a real breakthrough for me in terms of my art. It gave me loads of publicity and it meant that people began to look for and buy my paintings. “He grins.”And I got to learn so many new techniques; it gave my art a whole new dimension. But the cold was terrible. I’d never seen winter before and December and January feel like you’ve been put in a fridge!” Cartoon shakes his heard ruefully. But the cold aside, Cartoon’s experiences allowed him to work with the likes of Malaysia’s John Lei, New Zealand’s Heather Straka and the UK’s Bella Easton, and perhaps more importantly, enabled him to give his work a political edge. “People always look at my work and think ´happy village scenes´, but it’s really not true. Most of my paintings have a moral, or they have a political dimension, which is there, even when it isn’t obvious. So what messages does he convey through his art? “Well, there’s the concept and importance of work which has a real socio-political element to it and then there’s the way that the faces of my people are divided into different colours. I did that because Africa doesn’t belong to just one culture, it belongs lots of different tribes and cultures I tried to emphasise that by putting different colours into faces and using lots of different patterns. Africa is a melting pot, not a one colour, once culture and religion place.”

And is he interested in politics outside of his paintings? “Of course, he admits.” I think that there’s an element of African politics in my blood. But I think women are generally less interested in politics, although they should be because they’re a big part of the tribes and cultures that make Africa what it is. Especially when it comes to family life. The mother plays a big role in the family and that influences the way people think.” One of his paintings entitled ´Mother and Child´ sums these thoughts up. It depicts a gentle Madonna like mother suckling her baby; depicted in riotous technicolor of course. “It just shows how reliant we are on our families and our mothers in particular. I think that we’re ready to see scenes that are as intimate as this, and the whole idea of a mother feeding her child is just so primeval and beautiful. We all come from our mothers and their care.”

THE MELTING POT

So After all his international success and growing popularity at home, where does Cartoon see his career going? “The same as before,” he grins. “But I’m staying here because I feel much more creative when I’m in Africa. The rich culture is mine and it’s where I feel comfortable. Plus, there’s always plenty of sources of inspiration here. I missed home so much when I was in the UK, but there were always things to remind me of home. I’ll never forget seeing bowl of roses in someone’s house and then looking at the label and realising that they were from Kenya! It was odd in a way”. But it isn’t just his love of Kenya that keeps him at home. Joseph also has a young son named Victor who at four and a half is showing signs of following in his father’s footsteps. “He loves to come into the studio when I’m painting,” smiles Joseph, “but I shouldn’t be surprised really, because my brother and some of cousins also paint.”

Joseph Cartoon is clearly a man of many experiences and the beautiful multi-hued works that he creates reflect this. As does his enduring love for Africa and its people, as well as his insistence on creating a place where tribal differences don’t matter. Africa’s beauty and mix of people are ever present in his work, and make it a truly African oeuvre. “Like I said,” he emphasises. “Africa has this cultural richness and beauty, purely because its such a melting pot. Without its people and especially its women, Africa wouldn’t be as wonderful as it is.” Passionate and in love with his home, Joseph Cartoon’s paintings are more than garish cartoons; instead they are eloquent testimony to his love of Africa and its people.

Where to find his Art:

Gallery Watatu, Nairobi

Website:

http://www.africanartnow.com/artist_product.php?id=137

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Written by Donald Levine, posted on tigrey.net in Aril 2008.

Featured in exhibitions in two prestigious French galleries in Autumn 2008, Galerie Alternance in the north and Galerie Cabotse in Paris, the work of Fikru Gebre Mariam has reached new levels of both aesthetic power and public recognition. The moment is ripe for looking back at Fikru’s oeuvre and taking a fresh look at his artistic development. Inspired to pursue an artistic career after winning an award at age 13 at the International Children’s Painting Exhibition in Beijing, Fikru began formal study at the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts, founded a half-century ago by the distinguished artist Ale Felege Selam, who introduced modern methods of teaching drawing and painting, which he had studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1950s. There he became a protégé of instructor Tadesse Mesfin, who not only taught him painterly skills but gave him a graphic theme which he would embrace, struggle with, and grow through, ever since. The motif was a variant of a genre of contemporary Ethiopian painting sometimes glossed as “2 women,” a phrase used to represent women doing everyday tasks like spinning and making pottery, as shown at left. Although some Ethiopian artists often dismiss their works in this genre as mere touristic products, not expressive of their true selves, others have turned it into a serious genre. In Fikru’s hands, it became a vehicle for one epiphany after another. He has gone from depictions of groups of women standing, to more abstract representations, often with masks, to purely abstract creations. At each phase similar qualities strike the viewer. They convey a blend of rich hues, emotional intensity, immediacy of impact, and a touch of austerity. If asked to compare them to European artists, I would say that Fikru’s compositions offer a blend of Modigliani figures in a Giacomettian “Still Ladies” stance presented with Braquean geometric abstraction. In a conversation with the artist, Fikru let me know that Braque was indeed his favorite artist. Even so, there is no mistaking the deeply Ethiopian flavor of these paintings. They display hints of Ethiopian miniatures and church paintings. They are imbued with African earth tones. They use the colored garments of Harari women. They capture the somber mood of much Ethiopian life. The world of Ethiopian painters is, like much else about contemporary Ethiopian life, divided between those who have remained at home and attempted to be true to Ethiopian realities, and those who have emigrated and whose offspring evince a passion to emulate Western styles to a high degree. With studios in Paris and Addis Ababa, where he spends half a year each, Fikru savors all he can of both worlds. He insists that it is essential for his art that he remains close to his Ethiopian roots–and indeed has continued to live in his father’s gibbi until now. At the same time, Fikru finds it no less essential to spend half of each year abroad. As he wrote me, “I believe the freedom of being out of Ethiopia has amazing value in my life and work. Both in Europe and the U.S., especially in Paris . . .visiting museums and art galleries bring dramatic important changes in my work. It is like seeing yourself in the big mirror, even if you think you know yourself.” Seriousness but not somberness is immediately evident when one meets the artist–a rugged, good-looking, almost athletic Ethiopian male in his mid-thirties. He could be, and really is, an assiduous businessman. He works without stop, producing a seemingly endless flow of polished products. His studios in both cities are packed with canvasses like rush-hour traffic. This enables him to live fairly inexpensively and yet maintain a wealth of paintings for sale, in contrast to Ethiopian artists in the Diaspora who often find it difficult to make ends meet. Even so, it is not mainly a commercial motive that drives his prolific output. His social conscience remains alive and well; his many awards include posters against AIDS and for Family Planning. Beyond that, Fikru’s being patently manifests his relation to art as a vocation in the deeper sense. It offers him a constant challenge to let his spirit grow. This is one reason why I believe his work has such an impact on viewers. It certainly had on me. That said, the exceptional value of the art of Fikru Gebre Mariam may lie in its capacity to mediate Ethiopian and Western worlds, yet at a level that marks him as one of Ethiopia’s most acclaimed international painters. For more, see www.fikru.fr Donald N. Levine is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of many books, chapters and articles on Ethiopia and has had direct involvement in Ethiopian affairs since the 1960s. His works on Ethiopia include: Wax and Gold: Tradition and Innovation in Ethiopian Culture (1965), now reprinted by Tsehai Publishers and Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multiethnic Society (1974), a second edition of which, with a new preface was published, in 2001. Other publications include Visions of the Sociological Tradition (1995) and, most recently, Powers of the Mind: The Reinvention of Liberal Learning.

We are very honored to welcome Fikru G. Mariam to our growing community of artists here at Africanartnow.com. Born in 1973, Fikur is one of Ethiopia’s most acclaimed international painters. Fikru has been practising art since he was eleven and trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Addis Ababa, from which he graduated in 1995. He has exhibited extensively in Ethiopia and France and he has been the subject of numerous documentaries in his native Ethiopia. Documentaries are also under way in France and the U.S.  Above you can read a article about Fikru from tigrey.net written by Donald E. Levine.

We are very proud and honored to welcome Kerima Ahmed as a new artist on AfricanArtNow.com.  Kerima is from Ethiopia and graduated from the Addis Ababa Fine Arts School in 2002. She participated in seven group exhibitions in Addis between 2000 and 2004. Her oriental-looking city-scapes that refer to the town of Harrar in east-central Ethiopia witness her strong feeling for color and color combination’s. She skilfully uses ornamental elements, yet her paintings are not in the least decorative

We are very proud and honored to welcome Chike Obagu as a new artist on among our growing community of artists on AfricanArtNow.com.  Chike is an  inspiring new Artist from Nigeria.

Chike Obeagu was born on May 22, 1975. He studied art at University of Nigeria, Nsukka, graduating in Second Class Honours (upper division), in painting. Obeagu has distinguished himself uniquely in the last few years with the unconventional use of diverse materials in executing his paintings. His works have been reviewed in national dailies, and are in public and private collections in different parts of the world. He currently studies as an M.F.A student at University of Nigeria.

You are invited to  the opening of Evarist Chikawe exhibtion at Mawazo Contemporary art gallery from the 1th of July to the 12th of July.  About the exhibition Evarist say: that because I always works in different ways, but this time my artworks in one line, even colors.

Everist Chikawe works and live in Tanzania, and has had several exhibitions in Europe, last at residence output in S. Marco in Venice Italy.

We will like to thank all our artists on the site for their patience. It took much longer that we expected to finish the site, but we hope you all feel it was worth the wait.

We have spent the last 4-6 months building AfricanArtNow into what you see now, and we want you all to know that we are NEVER going to stop working towards making Africanartnow the best online art gallery for contemporary African Artists 0f all kinds to sell their art/display their artwork. You can expect to see constant improvements and developments of new site features. Finally we are always open to new ways to improve the site so please don’t hold back! Write to us, and we will listen!

Best Regard the Africanartnow Team

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