Under My Skin: The Resurrection Of Genuine Painting

Zimbabwe Wed 24-03-2010

Under My Skin: The Resurrection Of Genuine Painting
By Stephen Garan'anga

The National Art Gallery of Zimbabwe in Harare embarked on one of its core businesses for 2010 by hosting its first solo exhibition of abstract paintings and coloured prints by a young female dreamer, Portia Zvavahera.

The exhibition entitled "Under My Skin" is running concurrently with a complimentary show of mostly mixed media work by seven other dynamic young artists who are said to be standing in as revolutionaries whose aim is to give the face of art a new meaning.

Also running yet on another subsection of the Gallery is a three dimensional show from the National Gallery's permanent collection which has been a continuous thread of the inspiration invested in the young artists.

Portia Zvavahera has successfully emerged as one of Zimbabwe's budding female artists whose positive outlook on life has been commendable in the current development of visual arts in the country.

Her work is inspired by her dreams and strongly believes that people see their future through their dreams.

The theme 'Under My Skin' is a brainchild of one her dreams and she powerfully illustrates these through her painting and printing.

In a print work titled "Walking Away", it was inspired after she had a horrific dream but could only remember seeing a figure walking away.

Most of her dreams are linked to our traditional beliefs that today are regarded as superstitious. Dreaming of a dog is considered as either a sign of protection or danger.

This is illustrated in a print work titled 'Kuchengetwa / Kurwiswa' that demonstrates a vision of a dog.

As a result her works are a product of what stems from under her skin. On display are print works that also interpret attitudes of happiness, sorrow, love or hate.

Portia Zvavahera attained art education at institutions such as the National Art Gallery Visual Arts School, Harare Polytechnic and secured a place as a resident artist at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe and Greatmore Studios in Cape Town, South Africa in 2009.

She has participated in numerous exhibitions attaining a handful of awards.

Zvavahera's passionate and continual exploration in abstract painting is an aspect that should be held in high esteem as the current crop of painters take pieces of cloth, left over from the trousers made for them by their wives and sisters; take sticks from the backyard and impedimenta from their wives kitchen, frame it all with bamboo and put it on a wall.

We have, therefore, moved into a different era of painting in Zimbabwe, one in which paint is not so important, one in which, like any other field of endeavour today in the country we make do with what we have.

Abstract painting allows what is in to rise to the surface, what is felt to be revealed. Abstract painting is first and foremost about the use of paint, about giving paint its reign, allowing paint to be part of the process of painting, to almost have its own ideas about what it wants to do and where it wants to go.

Abstract painting strips naked a person of orthodox ideas about painting, it is about 'stage effect', it is about theatre, it is about, in a sense, performance. For the abstract painter, the world boils down to the painter and the paint, no more, no less.

Zvavahera has managed to forgo the brush and the sponge, she allows the paint to establish its own direction, colours to merge with other colours and create new colours.

Her use of colour and technique puts her firmly into position of one of the front runners in a treacherous marathon of reviving genuine painting rather than to search the kitchen cupboard for what to hang on the walls or crank up ancient welders to put together their scrap metal.

Though times are extremely hard, artists should consider how much they could spend on paint as much as they consider how much they spend on school fees, or fuel or beer, and if clever they too might turn to the earth and make pigments in the manner of the early artists.

Early painters took to the soils on the ground outside their caves and somehow made them into pigments from which they fashioned paintings.

There was a time painters were alchemists, transforming PVA (Polyvinyl acetate) and poster paints into paints with the potential of the best of imported oils ... artists who in painting abstract paintings brought to the surface deep feelings, and repression ...

It's time artists took painting seriously like Portia Zvavahera, put the country on the map and be recorded by history. What is needed "out there" is the real thing, the paintings themselves.

All artworks by Portia Zvavahera

skip to top

Your Comments

skip to top

African Artists Portfolios

Attukwei 'Serge' Clottey is a Fine Artist

Click To View All African Artist Portfolios

Kaafiri Kariuki at the Creativity Gallery

Shades of Time: An exhibition by Kaafiri Kariuki at the Creativity Gallery National Museum of Kenya

Features By Regions

Featured Artist Portfolio

Title: Making Ways
Name: Tabitha Wa Thuku
Country: Kenya
Medium: Mixed media on heavy canvas
Size: 149 X 140 cms
Click here to view