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Playful blends of the real and surreal

Monday April 24 2017
lukes

Juma and Pendo by Ron Enoch Lukes. PHOTO| KARI MUTU.

Kenyan painter Ron Enoch Lukes, 23, likes to play with surreal effects when he paints real images of wildlife, nature and people.

In his portraits of cultural and contemporary scenes, Lukes says he aims to represent “the social-cultural factors in human life which show hope, are beautiful and delighting.”

He also brings in illuminating effects, such as in the painting Bathed by the Sun, which is of a woman in cultural dress and traditional jewellery smiling.

The light shining on her body contrasts dramatically with the dark background. There is a flower in her headband, and butterflies flitting in the air around her. Lukes says that butterflies represent life as beautiful and delicate.

“I blend together bits of the real world with the unreal, focusing on flowers, leaves and sometimes butterflies as representation techniques,” said Lukes, a graduate of fine art and design from Kenyatta University.

He also likes to capture happiness in animals. Juma and Pendo is a painting of two chimpanzees with one lovingly holding the face of the other, which has two yellow flowers on its head. The flowers add to the tenderness of the moment.

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The painting Where am I? is of a view of treetops and blue skies from what looks like the bottom of a stone well.

Kibanda demonstrates Lukes’s talent for realism. It is of a market stall filled with fruits and vegetables, every item precisely drawn and coloured in.

You can almost count the individual peas in a pink basket. Lukes is inspired by common themes in everyday life that all people can relate to, regardless of age and social status.

Another series of realistic illustrations is themed around rainy days. In Evening Shower, El Nino and Rainy Day in the Jam, through the transparency of rain-splashed windows are cars, tail-lights, wet roads and blurred buildings.

Instead of complaining about daily traffic jams and the rain, Lukes photographed and then painted his fascination with the colours and hazy forms that emerge.

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