An aid worker stared around, stunned by the horrors before him.

Children were being killed; their homes were being blasted into ruins; power, water, sanitation had all failed.

He sought refuge in the only constant that remained... the endless suck and roar of the sea.

The year was 1999, the worker was the artist Xavier Verhoest, then employed by Medecins Sans Frontieres, and the place was the Gaza Strip.

The sea as a symbol of certainty in an unstable world, along with flowers, trees and the shifting clouds, became — and has remained — one of the constant reference points of Verhoest’s art.

Examples of his continuing attempts to find the still centre of chaos and codify the spiritual as well as physical beauty that surrounds us can currently be found at the Wasp and Sprout coffee bar and bistro off Loresho Ridge, Nairobi.

Around 24 of his mixed media works line the walls of this achingly trendy meeting place for the city’s literati and glitterati.

Bleached wood, distressed paintwork and raw concrete give an impression almost of Gaza itself; except for the umbrellas priced at $55 apiece, the chunky jewellery for sale, and a menu that naturally includes gluten-free food plus herbal teas that promise to calm and “cleanse”, whatever the horrible implications of that may be.

Most of Verhoest’s pieces, there until well into next month, are based on photographs over which he paints and writes.

Exceptions were a group of small cloth collages inspired by the Dogon and their weavings, seen on a recent trip to Mali, plus four small seascapes hung vertically.

Pride of place, high behind the bar, was given to a large work called If a Tree Falls; an image of a baobab, which I thought had been accidentally hung upside down, or perhaps presented as a pun on the baobab’s nickname — the Upside Down Tree.

But no, the signature was the right way up, so why was the tree inverted?

Verhoest chose it as a metaphor for a world upended by environmental degradation, such as illegal logging, and by terrorism. It acknowledges too that the crown of any tree could also become its root, binding earth and sky. Red splashes across the canvas symbolise blood, with its overtones of death and rebirth.

This work made a powerful if initially puzzling statement.

Most pleasing to my eye, however, was a large piece featuring pink blossoms floating across the canvas. They were ethereally beautiful, and like much of this artist’s work, possessed of an almost surreal delicacy. They spoke too of small explosions of fecundity and it was no surprise to discover they were based on the first flowers held by Verhoest’s baby son. The title Mes 3 Amours (My Three Loves) refers to the artist’s wife and two children.

This is a compact and excellent exhibition in which Verhoest shows a range of expression, unhindered by any theme apart from the broadest exploration of the artist’s joys and fears and his search for contentment in an increasingly dystopian world.

The management of the Wasp and Sprout have their hearts in the right place. They offered free exhibition space to the artists based at Kuona, and the bistro is well on the way to replacing the late La Rustique restaurant that was in nearby Westlands as the go-to place for physical and spiritual nourishment.

But being Nairobi, as the art scene takes one step forward it takes two more back, with the news that both The Art Space and The Little Gallery have closed their exhibition halls.

The Art Space, opened off Riverside Drive with a flourish by the installationista Wambui Kamiru just 16 months ago, is to close at the end of this month. Instead, Kamiru plans to treat the whole of the city and its suburbs as her Space, with a series of pop-up exhibitions and events whenever opportunities present themselves.

First on the list was a joint show at the Lord Errol restaurant in well-heeled Runda, almost inevitably including paintings by Patrick Kinuthia. More exhibitions but with the accent on conceptual and site-specific work are planned.

The Little Gallery of William Ndwiga, which began by holding exhibitions in people’s gardens, expanded into a gallery at Karen but faced with unmanageable overheads, has been forced to close and revert to shows amid the shrubbery.

Ndwiga does however continue to ambush visitors to the Mega City Mall in Kisumu with a range of accessible paintings and sculptures to suit most tastes.

The gallery has also continued its commitment to charity, holding an auction this month to raise funds for the Mbugua Rosemary Foundation that honours the memory of two young people killed in the Westgate Mall terrorist attack in 2013.

Mbugua was the nephew of President Uhuru Kenyatta and Rosemary was his fiancée. The Foundation raises funds to help budding entrepreneurs through training and mentored business development. The auction took place a week ago on February 17, and realised around Ksh1.5 million ($15,000).

Meanwhile, from the hip, cool, stylish and oh-so chic delights of the Wasp and Sprout, back to the studios...

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