Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England after the beheading of Charles 1 in 1649, was asked to sit for his portrait by Samuel Cooper — the best known painter of his day — and famously replied:

“Use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me...”

This statement, usually boiled down to, “Paint me warts and all,” has been taken literally by a painter new to me but well worth attention: Peter Clavers Odhiambo.

He fell in love with a photograph he found on the Internet. It was of an Indian woman aged, at best guess, somewhere between 85 and 100, and he decided to commit it to canvas.

The result is a huge portrait in oils, 150cm by 200cm, and tightly cropped, thrusting the face and its every mole, wart and wrinkle right into your space.

He created it in his studio at Dust Depot near the Kenya National Railway Museum gallery in Nairobi, helped in no small measure by the fact that he was painting from a two dimensional photograph rather than an awkward, three dimensional person; the modelling and spatial relationships therefore already worked out for him.

No matter, artists are often spurred simply by curiosity and I sense that inquisitiveness in Odhiambo — a drive to discover what makes it all tick.

The painting stole the show in the Wasanii exhibition at the Kenya Art Fair last week.

Visitors were posing for snapshots in front of it with their friends and others were taking selfies… it had become the icon of the fair.

In short, a hit.

Odhiambo caught this woman (or at least the photograph of her) very well. Her skin wrinkled like tree bark, and the solidity of the skull that held up the fleshy shroud of her face showing us, as Wyndam Lewis put it, the bone beneath the pulp.

Her eyes, lit deep in their sockets, suggested wisdom, while the size of the piece — three square metres — meant that a mole sprouting stiff white hairs in a fold of skin to the side of her mouth glistened like a soft black pudding, and another beneath an eye swelled pinkly like the end of a giant sausage, almost the width of a hand.

I counted no fewer than 20 moles, warts and blebs on this ancient, biscuit brown face, framed by stark white hair.

Called Through the Years, it was not the only example of super realism on show.

A few yards away was a coloured pencil drawing by Seth Odhiambo Amolo of a young girl, called Waiting for Mother.

Slightly larger than life size, her soulful face was framed by a skilfully rendered purple scarf and a headwrap, while the skin of her soft cheeks bloomed like a petal. The flesh, this time unmarked and plump, shone silken over the bone.

And then on the opposite wall was a portrait of a boy by Eddy Ochieng Ouma, who caught him laughing as water cascaded over his face; a painting that spoke of joy and hope. Again taken from a photograph, I think.

Some may find these three works a touch laboured — why bother when we all have cameras, even on our phones? — but as David Hockney pointed out, the time layered into creating a painting repays the viewer with the time it continues to give enjoyment.

For sure it is the sort of detailed modelling and realisation skills an artist needs to get under the belt before moving on to other things — including a looser, more vital expression.

I would not want any of these works on my wall, but the scale of one and the immaculate finishes of the others did suggest very sound starting points for future careers.

Thoughtful survey

Elsewhere, the fair offered not so much a cool and thoughtful survey of the finest art East Africa had to offer as the happy anarchy of a bring and buy sale.

Pile it high, stack it deep and sell it not so cheap… 90 per cent of the fair was cheerful chaos.

This certainly made art accessible and maybe attracted people not normally interested in looking at, let alone buying, paintings. But it also put it on a par with anything else you could pick up at the market.

Some would say that is a good thing: Simple art for the people; democratic, egalitarian, colour and vitality wherever you look.

Others may feel it cheapens the artworks and weakens the context and refinement of paintings and sculpture made to enlighten us, enhance our lives, offer an uplifting and spiritual experience… help us to understand our society and know our rights.

I lean toward the latter camp.

Somehow that view seems more adult, rather as the art being produced in this region now seems to me to be more adult than that fostered in the 1980s and ‘90s.
Snobbishly, I patrol the palaces of princes and seek standards of excellence.

Yet in spite of my caveats, there was a lot to enjoy at this year’s fair — only the second to be held — and I am already looking forward to next year’s, possibly more adult, edition.

Warts and all.

Frank Whalley runs Lenga Juu, an arts and media consultancy based in Nairobi