The variety of visual art in this region is a constant delight.

Ranging from world class, through excellent to not so bad and ending up at downright dreadful, there is always something to see.

Usually it can be found on the wall or in a piece of sculpture.

But not always.

I was thrilled to find this week, for instance, a label next to a painting by one Kevin Ndege that trumpeted its title: Trinity in Polarity.

The painting was a series of splodges and swirls in bright colours. I am not showing it on this page in case it upsets sensitive people, in the same way that flash photography can cause epileptic fits, but I salute Ndege for the sheer splendour of the title; for its scope and breadth of vision.

It is so gloriously nonsensical that I could have written it myself. But alas I did not and, like the painter Kamal Shah, who once compared himself to a Zen master, I remain in search of enlightenment.

What on earth does it mean? What can it be about? What depths of artistic thought remain hidden from us behind this façade of an important sounding title?

What, in short, is the sound of one hand clapping?

The truly astonishing thing about it, and about Ndege, is that just a few yards away he is showing Mirrors Don’t Lie, which is among the best — if not the best — painting in the entire exhibition. And there are around 50 others to go at.

Subtle, delicate and restrained, this high key piece is a blush on the canvas, capturing precisely the fleeting grace of a woman’s body. The fact that it carries echoes of late Cubism only adds to its technical proficiency and charm.

Ndege is one of five painters sharing the halls of the Alliance Francaise in Nairobi in an exhibition called Colour Identity, which is on until the end of this month.

Catch it, there is lots to enjoy.

Two of the five artists, Pascal Chuma and Isabellah Mosigisi, are based at the Bobea Art Centre in Doonholm, Eastlands where an enthusiastic team led by Chuma try to make up for the shortfall in the Kenyan education system by teaching people how to draw and paint.

Chuma offers several of his large, cluttered canvases, which look far better in reproduction (smaller and more focused) than they do on the wall. There they are far too noisy for my taste, pumped full of ideas, consistent in style (again heavily influenced by Cubism with their fragmented imagery) but needing greater discipline.

It is Mosigisi who runs Ndege close for presenting both the worst and the best paintings in the show. Billed as influenced by abstract expressionism, she shades victory from even Trinity in Polarity for the Worst Picture Award with a heroic effort punctuated with bright yellow drips and dribbles that would sit comfortably in a market kiosk.

Yet on the opposite downstairs wall she shows an untitled painting that is a master-class in drawing. It is of a reclining nude; a single line of black acrylic applied, I suspect, directly from the tube. This is set against an unfortunate medley of every colour in the paintbox, which does its best to drown the figure but the line is superb.

I would like to think it was applied without any underdrawing (either original, copied or scaled up) but even if it were mapped out first, the application of the line is still exemplary.

Interestingly, in view of their erratic results, both Ndege and Mosigisi are self taught, while the consistent Chuma learnt his trade at the Buruburu Institute of Fine Arts.

The other two artists in this show, Moses Muigai and Moses Nyawanda, are based at the Railway Museum Art Studio, just off the city’s Haile Selassie Avenue, and both seem to go in for the sort of heavy handed social realism that either irritates or amuses rather like Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress… morality tales dressed up as souvenirs of street life.

Typically, Muigai’s bright Urban Survival features a hooded boy pick-pocketing a passer-by, watched by a woman with knowing eyes, while his cynical Another Regime has a cow, symbol perhaps of the state, grasping an elector by the throat.

Nyawanda points out the binding nature of what most of us would think of as normal life in his Career, Money, Family and Religion. These four modern horsemen, uncompromising with their muted tones, are represented as figures with their backs to us, hands handcuffed or in chains.

Now there’s polarity for you.

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