Something to put on the wall, Sir, Madam? Easy on the eye and not too hard on the pocket?

Patrick Kinuthia has just the thing for you. Many things, in fact. In watercolours, oils and acrylics. On paper and on canvas. And they all will do nicely, together as a set, or each on their own.

For the ubiquitous Kinuthia, whose work adorns crafts shops, gift shops and galleries alike, is one of East Africa’s best-known painters.

From leopards to landscapes, Bible stories to market scenes, beauties to ballerinas (and in the latter case both at the same time), Kinuthia is your man.

But his paintings, good as they are, exemplify a common problem in art… works that lack substance become purely decorative. They look good but do little to extend our knowledge of ourselves and our place in society.

Patrick Peter Kinuthia, aged 43, lives at Redhill, to the west of Nairobi in Kiambu. A born-again Christian, he names his influences as the super-realist Norman Rockwell and the wildlife painter David Shepherd.

And his influences show.

After working as a publicity artist in the family’s cinema business he became a graphic designer, studying at Kenya Polytechnic, leaving to become a full time freelance artist in 1997.

He is a professional, offering paintings of a guaranteed quality within a defined canon of styles and subjects.

Two pictures by him that I saw recently were at a garden exhibition in Nairobi, one an illustration from the Bible and the other a rather appealing little painting of a ballerina at rest.

The exhibition (which continues until next week) was curated by William Ndwiga of the Little Art Gallery at the home of Yuriko Uehara, an expat living in Lavington, Nairobi.

It is of some 60 or so works by 16 artists, including Fred Abuga, Maryann Muthoni, Yassir Ali, Xavier Verhoest, Dennis Muraguri, Jeff Wambugu, Paul Onditi and other familiar figures on the East African scene.

Ten of the paintings were by Kinuthia.

The Biblical scene was a beautifully modulated figure study entitled Hadassah’s Prayer. The subject was from the Book of Esther and featured Hadassah, leader of the Israelites who became Esther, queen of the Persian king Xerxes.

In the creamy brown background, a hint of temple columns. Hadassah’s face and shoulders were modelled with hints of crimson and bold strokes of blue and green, contrasting with her crisp, white gown.

The pose was demure. It was a tender picture, with the nearest Kinuthia ever gets to a message (even a queen must be humble before her God), enlivened by little expressionist touches like the title handwritten across the surface and scoring of the picture plane.

His Ballerina, in an equally subdued palette, was of a seated dancer stretching, hands to her calves, the body forming a graceful arc. Degas did this sort of thing so well, and Kinuthia followed, en pointe.

Each picture bore a large signature; in the case of the ballerina, roughly the length of her body. This artist puzzles me.

I admire his craft skills enormously. His deployment of tone to create recession, for instance, is always secure, his palette unfailingly matches the mood he is aiming to create, his drawing is sound and his composition simple if a little predictable.

Also I quite like his trick of blurring the backgrounds of his portraits to throw the broadly painted heads into sharper focus, as a photographer would open the aperture to reduce depth of field.

What puzzles me is the apparent lack of ambition in the paintings of such a capable technician.

I get the feeling he is always working well within his comfort zone — a bit like his heroes Rockwell and Shepherd — content to turn out any number of well painted works that suit most circumstances and nearly all budgets.

In short it is commercial art. Illustrative, simple and well-executed.

The pictures do not tell me much, apart from the superficial intelligence presented by their polished and well-practised subjects.

They reassuringly record what is there — demure queen, flirty girl, handsome warrior, restful landscape – without looking worryingly beneath the surface.

He is not alone in this. Samuel Githui and Dinesh Revankar tread a similar path. Normally, I would be the first to agree there is nothing wrong with that.

It is true that artists paint to explore themselves and their societies, but it is also true that in the real world they have to put bread on the table and pay the school fees. We cannot all be Cezanne.

Yet Kinuthia’s facility means he has potential to do so much more.

If you want to see the difference made plain look at similar pictures by another popular Kenyan artist: Timothy Brooke.

Both painters employ sound drawing to underpin a good eye for composition, plus a sensitivity to colour and tone.

Both offer a fair likeness of their subject. But Brooke’s also contain something of their essence. The painter is a living presence in his work, offering a fleeting expression or a shift in the clouds for us to examine. There is always something we can get hold of and reflect upon.

Kinuthia paints a leopard and does so well. But it will stare at you, dumb and unblinking, forever. You could pat it on the head and give it a biscuit.

Brooke paints a pride of lions slinking across the savannah that could well turn on you if you get too close. There is danger in the air, an excitement captured on canvas.

Kinuthia’s paintings are not those of an artist examining himself and his place in the world.

Perhaps as a man committed to his religion he has found the answers he once was seeking and needs to look no further. If so, that is a loss to us. He has the skills many an artist would envy and he could put them to more searching use.

One can only admire someone who has found himself. But I need a little more help and I look to the arts to provide it.

Frank Whalley runs Lenga Juu, a fine arts and media consultancy based in Nairobi. Email: [email protected]