The rains enjoyed in Nairobi last week came as a blessing for Richard Kimathi.

He foresaw them, or longed for them, or was dreaming of them when creating a group of paintings that has just gone on show in the city.

And they are astonishing pictures, the sort that do not come along very often but when they do, have the force to stop you in your tracks.

Each called Colourful Rain (numbered I to IV) the four pictures are superficially abstract but in fact as realistic as you can get.

What they show ranges from drizzle, through a summer shower to a fully fledged downpour.

What they are is original in conception, meticulous in execution and dazzling in effect.

They have been made by poking between 300 and 600 pieces of cotton lamp wick, each around 10cm long, through large canvasses then knotting them at the back so they hang down, proud of the picture surface, each one a slash of rain.

These are then painted with bright complementary colours and with such exacting care that not one splatter or splash marks the backgrounds, which reflect cold, cloudy or warm days with loose washes of rose or grey.

The raindrops and their colours dance before your eyes. You are surprised there are no puddles on the floor.

The show is at the One-Off gallery in the city’s western Rosslyn suburb and lasts until the 21st of this month.

Try to get there in the middle of the sort of deluge that marked the opening last week. It set the scene and made the pictures even more relevant.
The four Colourful Rain paintings — each 150cm by 200cm and the first of an intended series certain to become highly collectible — form a group among 20 pictures on the walls.

Working backwards, other recent works include five paintings called Capsules which show the rainbow contents of a chemist’s cupboard lying in small circular dishes.

Each Capsule — like the Colourful Rain series, in bright complementary colours — is a single brushstroke, a dash, setting up a vibrant tension against the circular rim of the dish.

Four of the pictures show single dishes; one has a group of nine on a black background.

They make lively, abstract patterns yet hint quietly at sickness and pain. Simple, clever and a typically deliberate contradiction.

A lot of Kimathi’s work does this — beguiles you with bold shapes and bright colours, then stabs you swiftly beneath the ribs.

In this he treads the path of his major influence, the Belgian expressionist James Ensor, a man steeped in the sinister aspects of carnival and the circus and whose riotous canvasses hinted at the undercurrent of darker events, including the two world wars.

Elsewhere are examples of what many people will see as the mainstream of Kimathi’s oeuvre — enamel like pictures of hooded figures, dark faced women with mysterious eyes peering from what could be shrouds, and a bizarre menagerie of animals (pigs, mongooses, cats and monkeys) that represent his personal icons for ourselves, for predators and for those who would block our progress.

Kimathi is a smart painter who has something to say about the human predicament; what others have called the battle of life.

He looks ahead and sees disaster. He provides no solutions but at least this time offers a few dishes of painkillers.

Kimathi’s previous pictures, some of which can be seen in adjoining galleries at the One-Off include a number of experimental pieces in which he works off the picture plane by applying in one case, a group of soft-toy babies in their wombs, in another example a multitude of circular cut-outs, pieces of cloth stuck down on the canvas like open yellow flowers, and in one of the most memorable (now in Vancouver as a stellar part of a major collection of East African art) rows of injured dolls fastened to the canvas, blood streaming from their bodies.

For me Kimathi is at his best when manipulating the picture surface like this.

Through the objects he fastens to it — figures, flowers or drops of rain — he insinuates his work, his ideas, into our personal space.

Much of this artist’s work has always been uneasy; a touch too edgy for a quick sale.

It has tended to go to people who collect him with a passion.

But in his latest work, Colourful Rain, he has opened his arms to embrace us and produced pictures that delight the heart and mind with a joyful celebration.

In this show, packed with originality and technical verve, Kimathi has established himself as one of the region’s finest young artists — a talent to be cherished, admired and enjoyed.

Frank Whalley runs Lenga Juu, a fine arts and media consultancy based in Nairobi. Email: [email protected]