Picasso Of The Ghetto

Kenya Thu 07-06-2007

Picasso Of The Ghetto
By Wangari Mungai

He calls himself the Picasso of the Ghetto. He is only 25 years old. He is many things rolled into one, but it’s all many things art. He is a painter, a sculptor, graffiti artist African jeweler, and a drummer.

But he is also other things not art, like he is a professional skater – was part of Kenya’s national team – and a professional cyclist as well. He is David Gathere and he hardly sits still.

“Art is in me. And I guess I am also in art,” says the somewhat reserved artist. “It is almost impossible for me to put a finger on when I actually got into art. I have also been doing something artistic for as long as I can remember. Even in primary school, I was always involved in making crafts during the arts and crafts lessons. This has been my lifestyle. It has only got better with time”

I first saw Gathere’s work before I met him. I was taken back by the captivating uniqueness of the abstract painting of the crucifixion. It was simple but at the same time the kind of painting that lingers in your memory days or months after you have seen it. It looked like a master piece to me and was curious to know the big name behind the work.

I thought the painter had attempted to do a replica of the famed Shroud of Turin. It is after some inquiry that I discovered that the painter was a young man who lived at the Gatina slums in Kawangware, Nairobi.

A few days later, and I was on my way to meet the painter. Gathere was chipping away at a block of wood. A nude figure was half way done. All around him were paintings, his paintings, done on different media. Some were done on canvas, some on wood and some on paper.

“I am living for art,” says Gathere when we settle down in his living room. His living room is an extension of his working area, only more detailed. There are more paintings hanging in here, perhaps his favorites, and additions like sculptures. The door that leads to his bedroom is one huge nude sculpture.

“I have been perfecting my strokes with every piece I do,” he says looking at an abstract painting of a woman playing a guitar. “But I tend to always get attached to my work and then it becomes difficult for me to sell it. But then again, this is not so big a problem to me because I do not believe that people should engage in art solely for commercial purposes. Then people lose touch with the spirit of the art they are engaged in and concentrate instead on the money they could make”.

Gathere’s difficulty in pricing his work is evidence when I ask him how much he would sell different things displayed in the living room. “How much do you think it is worth?,” was often his answer. And he insists that he does not sell his work to people who do not appreciate art but who buy art just because they can afford it.

“Art is something that should only be bought by those who appreciate it, who value it and see something new and beautiful whenever they look at a piece of art, regardless of how long they’ve had it. Those are the people that I feel good about selling my work to,” he says. “I do not do any work of art to impress but rather to express myself”.

At this, Gathere voices his disappointment with the Maasai market artists, who have been reduced to just drawing ‘maasai stick’ paintings. “These are easy to do for any artist. But they have lost meaning now. They do not mean anything to the artist. It is not a way of expressing anything. It is a way of trying to impress the tourists and others who do not value art and not a way of expressing an idea or anything.

It is for those who want to make quick money and those who do not want to pay for quality art” Gathere feels that this kind of commercialising art is killing both to the artist who loses the motivation to do better and to the quality of art in the country. He does not display any of his paintings at the Maasai market, saying that other artists have the tendency of copying works of art and doing a bad job at it and therefore cheapening the original. At the market, he only sells bead necklaces, bangles, earrings and other trinkets – just like everybody else.

Gathere says that he is not a slave to any kind of art. “I keep my mind and heart open to expressing itself in any way it finds an outlet. When you do art from the heart and not copy from books or from other artists, then art becomes real. It becomes part of your being and that also becomes evident in the your finished product” Female nudes are Gathere’s favorites.

Gathere did not have any formal training in the kind of art he does. He was studying graphic design at the Kenya Polytechnic for a year but dropped out when he could no longer afford to pay for his fees.

“My dream is to start a foundation that aids poor ghetto children, from 16 years and below, who have a natural talent in art. I would want to expose these kids to all the facilities that I was not exposed to that would have helped me become a better artist earlier on in life. I do not think I have a strong desire to leave the ghetto until I have accomplished this. I think that is what a Picasso of the Ghetto should do,” he says with a chuckle.

Gathere has had exhibitions of his work at the Braeburn Exhibition and also at the Gallery of East Africa, at the National Museum, before it was closed down for renovations. By the way, Gathere had no idea what the Shroud of Turin was when I prodded about the first painting that first made me want to meet him. His piece was an original that coincidentally looked like the shroud.

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