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Patrick Mukabi, the art mentor teaches and learns

Saturday July 22 2017
mukabi

Patrick Mukabi at work on his mural at the school in Silkeborg, Denmark. PHOTO | COURTESY OF SILKE

By FRANK WHALLEY

Those who teach, learn,” remarked Cicero. And as a former teacher I much prefer that to the adage usually attributed to George Bernard Shaw: “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”

Artists who can include Patrick Mukabi, whose paintings can be seen in public places throughout Kenya — yet whose legacy will surely feature that of mentor to tomorrow’s stars.

Mukabi, first at the National Museums of Kenya, then the GoDown Arts Centre, and now the quaintly named Dust Depo attached to Kenya Railway Museum, has tutored a host of artists, many of whom are already internationally respected with others recognised as emerging talents.

At the National Museums they included Peter Elungat and Peterson Kamwathi; at the GoDown, Florence Wangui, Dickens Otieno, Mike Kyalo, Alex Mbevi and Nadia Wamunyu; and at the Dust Depo, where Mukabi has worked for the past two years, are Levens Lenyerere (hailed as one of the region’s Young Guns in the Circle’s recent show), Eric Mureithi and Bebeto Ochieng, all of whom are finding secure places on the local art scene.

Rigorous tutor

Mukabi as a practising artist is a rigorous tutor.

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First comes drawing in pencil and charcoal of solid objects — cones, spheres and cylinders — then the principles of modelling with light and shade, then perspective.

And finally, after six weeks or so of intense study, comes drawing the human figure. If you can draw from life, including the nude, you can draw anything, they say. And with Mukabi, traditional teaching methods live on.

Alongside his teaching, Mukabi, now in his late 40s, continues to produce a barrage of his own works too — murals (in the Java at Upper Hill, Nairobi and in the departure hall of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport among other places); series of nudes (which were recently banned from the National Museum of Kenya, deemed too controversial for a show that was supposed to be about controversial art); lifesize figures cut from tin sheets (scorched during rioting following the 2007 Kenyan general election); and of course the paintings for which he is best known (groups of market mamas with wide hips and outrageous bottoms plus cute kiddies with their hair in corn rows).

Teaching the teacher

But who taught the teacher? Mukabi cites a range of mentors including the outsider artists Ancent Soi and Sane Wadu, and the painter Steve Njenga, sculptor Elijah Ogira and the Dutch artist Peter Klashort.

Now Mukabi’s skills are much in demand abroad, as well as at home.

For some years the high school in the Danish town of Silkeborg has sent pupils to study under him in Nairobi, and recently he was invited to the school both to teach art and to create a three-panel mural, seven metres long, on the theme of health and fitness in body and mind, appropriately for a wall in the gymnasium.

Indulging his love of figure painting — including a few discreet nudes for the liberal Danes — Mukabi developed the theme with groups of people athletically leaping and stretching, in his typical palette of pinks and blues. Muscular figures thrust upwards towards a sky in which others float and spin in an ethereal ballet reminiscent of Chagall.

The figures are African, reflecting both the school’s links to Kenya and the country’s welcoming attitude to immigrants. Apparently more than 50 of the school’s pupils are of African descent.

The lessons

A pleasant place to work, Silkeborg with its population of just over 40,000, is near the centre of Denmark, and is renowned for its hills, forests and lakes.

And when teaching there, what has Mukabi learnt?

“I’m with Cicero,” he told me. “I’ve learnt to see things again with the freshness of children’s eyes.”

Mukabi’s teach-and-paint project is slated to end on August 1.

Kichakani

Meanwhile a big welcome please for a new arts group in this region.

Called Kichakani (meaning “in the bush”) it is made up of artists living around Kitengela, to the east of Nairobi, in an area of savannah, thorn trees and wooded ravines bounded by the southern border of the city’s national park.

The group plans to show in each others homes by rotation, and the first exhibition was at the delightfully rambling house of Chelenge Van Rampelberg.

On show were paintings, prints and carvings by Chelenge, paintings by Jimnah Kimani, Neo Musangi, Justus Kyalo and Moira Bushkimani, a glass sculpture by Nani Croze from the nearby Kitengela glass works, photographs by James Muriuki, installations by Syowia Kyambi, and a minimalist sculpture of a bird in flight by Tums Yashim.

As with any group bound together by geography rather than a style, subject or ability, the result was variable, but two large abstracts by Kyalo and Chelenge’s woodcuts were hugely enjoyable.

I wish them all every success.

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