I have wanted for some time to see a full exhibition of landscapes by Patrick Kinuthia.

Once you get away from his doe-eyed women (beautiful though they may be) and his occasional leopards snoozing on branches (trite as they certainly are) he is a very fine painter indeed.

The man is at his best when out and about making studies of country lanes, tumbling streams and leafy trees, spattered by sunlight.

Then Kinuthia transforms himself into the essence of a painterly painter (experts call it malerisch), who defines form through areas of light, shade and colour and not through outlines.

This gives his landscapes an energy and briskness that carry with them the smack of the place itself… In their immediacy you appreciate the impact the scene has had on the artist. And in that sense they are more truthful than a photograph.

They tell you more about the scene, as though the time taken to record it has forced the artist into a deeper understanding that is then transmitted to us, the viewers...

You can smell the earth.

Some 15 of his landscapes made a brief appearance at the World Agroforestry Centre at the United Nations complex in Gigiri, Nairobi, last weekend, in an exhibition to highlight the need for something called “climate smart agriculture,” which will, no doubt, increase farming productivity, lower greenhouse gas emissions and generally save the planet.

The pictures were placed on easels in the conference hall. Being landscapes, most were appropriately green.

Previously, I had seen only small landscapes by Kinuthia — there were a number of them in this show — and in little paintings executed with big, slashing brushes, it is just possible to fudge mistakes with a generous wodge of paint; the eye can excuse it as part of a rough sketch and accept it into the scheme of the composition.

Conversely small often equals intensity; a little can say a lot.

What I found particularly interesting was the answer to something that had been nagging away at the back of my mind for some time: Can Kinuthia sustain such bravura over a large canvas? And the answer is — yes, he can.

There were several scenes from Embu, ranging from a country road at 60cm x 80cm, to Embu Landscape at 100cm x 150cm. Happily, increased size did not diminish the power of the artist’s vision.

One broad brush view of Limuru had been sold and there was a delightful, if tighter, look at Naivasha that caught the eye, too.

But it is brushstrokes writ large that see Kinuthia at his most confident and there was plenty of that to enjoy. Typical was an impression of Gachie painted on an orange ground that projected self-assurance.

Shown with the Kinuthias were 10 or so collages by James Njoroge. These were very clever assemblages of magazine paper cut-outs stuck down to make a mosaic of a scene.

The problem I find with them — as I do with Rosemary Karuga’s charming but awkward collages — is that they are not really wedded to the medium.

These pictures could have been realised just as well as paintings or coloured drawings… there is nothing uniquely collage-ish (if there is such a word) about them.

Having made that point, these pictures have been created with great skill — the way Njoroge catches the glow of an oil lamp is amazing — and they would certainly be a talking point on anybody’s wall.

What was wrong with this exhibition was that it lasted only for a cocktail party on the Friday evening, then for four hours the following day, barely time for anyone to see the work, let along decide to buy. I suspect that’s why on the Saturday I counted only one red spot in a show that deserved to be a sell-out.

So, blink and you missed it. Which is a shame because it was an excellent exhibition — one of the best I have seen lately — of contrasting styles on an important topic.

Maybe they needed their hall for something else… a conference perhaps.

No such problems across the city in Hurlingham, at the Shifteye Gallery where prop. Zachary Saitoti is currently showing his own landscape photographs, taken on trips around Kenya.

There are around 20 of them, mostly a handsome A1 size (roughly 60cm X 85cm) both in colour and, dramatically, in black and white.

Taken with his Canon 5D and 7D cameras through either a 17mm-55mm zoom or 50mm fixed length lens for extra depth of field, they show among the lyricism of mossy boughs, butterflies on tree trunks and secret glades, not so much man as the spoor of man.

Here are our traces in well worn pathways, the hollow of a cushion on a tractor seat, a greasy drilling rig and, spectacularly like a surrealist icon, a standpipe next to a soft red bin, isolated in a field near Nanyuki.

These show a sensitive vision complemented by technical skill.

There is an assumption that while a painting is an artist’s interpretation of a view or a person, a photograph tells the truth.

I’m not so sure.

Photos have always been subject to manipulation in the darkroom — retouching was the least of it — and now the advent of digital cameras plus Photoshop and similar software means almost anyone can if they so wished drop the Grand Canyon into the heart of Nairobi, place their wife’s head on Beyonce’s body or make themselves the Pope.

It is with some trepidation that we believe anything nowadays.

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