If one of the region’s oldest art centres — the Kuona Trust — is indeed going down the tubes, amid a flurry of rumours, accusations, misinformation and donor concern, then at least it is going down in style.

The current, and I hope not the final, exhibition is of paintings and woodcuts by one of the Trust’s best known artists, the printmaker John Silver.

Silver has worked in his studio there for the past 10 years, and it is at Kuona that he creates his typical surrealist woodcuts, frequently compared to the pioneer Kenyan painter Meek Gichugu.

Silver teaches print-making, and I do enjoy the formal rigour of his work.

I like his small editions (five is a big number for him), which mean collectors are effectively getting both high value and the best of the cut, and I love his palette of cerulean shot with accents of hunter’s green and crimson, intertwined with the soft browns of his baselines and branches.

I also admire the way he allows his thick inks to collect and congeal, paddling and cracking like the tactile surface of a macaroon.

Silver’s compositions are often surprising — strong central figures balanced by series of small motifs — and the subjects are certainly so.

Attenuated animals are a favourite, morphing into human or musical forms.

One shows an elephant’s trunk that extends into a harp; another presents an elephant with stilt-like legs taken from a zebra and a giraffe, supporting a woman who reclines elegantly against its trunk.

Yet another, a woodcut printed onto canvas, is of a man balanced on a waterbuck, a hat perched jauntily on one knee as he plays a lute. A fish swims through the air towards him while a small angel blows a giant trumpet.

Not only Meek Gichugu comes to mind. I think too of Alice in Wonderland, its author Lewis Carroll and his Lobster Quadrille and his poem Jabberwocky from Through the Looking Glass:

“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe...

Then too there is Edward Lear and his fabulous nonsense poems like The Owl and the Pussycat (who went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat).

Gichugu and Silver are of that ilk, and all the better for it.

This is a small but important exhibition of two paintings and 10 prints, sitting at the heart — physically as well as metaphorically — of the Kuona.

The Trust, on almost an acre off Likoni Road near State House, Nairobi, is home to 35 artists in some 22 studios plus four sculpture sheds. Studio rents range from $20 to $60 a month, and the place costs around $10,000 a month to run.

The maths does not balance, and donors stepped into the breach. Until now.

As well as the administration offices, there is an exhibition hall, a well stocked library, a kitchen and dining area plus, conveniently, a picture framing business famed for its excellent work and reasonable prices.

The Trust also offers exchange programmes through the international Triangle Network, and workshops for adults and children, beginners and experts, in addition to film shows and is home to a shop that sells both artworks and the materials to create them.

It addresses the lack of proper art education outside universities in Kenya. To forfeit all this would be a huge loss not only to the artists but also collectors, tourists, schools and indeed anyone with an interest in the arts.

More than 1,000 artists have benefited from the place since it opened in 1995, then centred on an old house in the grounds of the Kenya National Museum in Nairobi.

Well known artists who have worked at the Trust include Peterson Kamwathi, who still occasionally uses the print studio, Thom Ogonga, Michael Soi, Irene Wanjiku and Maryanne Muthoni, while current stars include Denis Muraguri, Silver, Maral Bolouri, Jackie Karuti, Aron Boruya, Longinus Nagila and Onyis Martin plus the sculptors Maggie Otieno, Anthony Wanjau, Kevin Oduor and Gakunja Kagwa.

So what to do?

Clear statement

I have never run an arts trust so like most people I am aiming a shot in the dark but I would have thought the start would be for the Kuona trustees to issue a clear statement about the Trust’s position, followed by an energetic campaign to save the place.

Kuona Trust is embedded in East Africa’s heritage as much as the Margaret Trowell school of art at Makerere University in Kampala, or the Oyster Bay Tingatinga collective in Dar.

To my mind, it is such a vital part of the region’s artistic life and an asset to the Kenyan capital that the government of Kenya itself might care to become involved through the Ministry of Sports, Culture and The Arts.

The words “rescue”, “soft loan” or even “grant” spring to mind.

Meanwhile we shall all just have to watch and wait. And hope for the best.

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