Richard Onyango’s Art Returns to Nairobi After Almost 20 Years

Kenya Mon 08-08-2011

Richard Onyango’s Art Returns to Nairobi After Almost 20 Years
By Margaretta Wa Gacheru | AfricanColours.com

Richard Onyango gained his notoriety and renowned as an artist whose lover was a fat lady named Drosie.

Drosie has been emblematic of Onyango's best work since his paintings went public in the early 1990s with the help of his Italian agent Sarenco a.k.a. Enos Mabelini.

Richard Onyango at Gallery Watatu

Richard Onyango at Gallery Watatu. Behind him is his vision, the 'Future of Port Lamu' | Image by Andrew Njoroge, AfricanColours.com

And yet in his current exhibition at Gallery Watatu, entitled Kenya's One and Only Richard Onyango, only one impression of his beloved Drosie can be found.

"I had to move on," the artist said in a one-on-one interview with the press just prior to the show's opening August 7th in Nairobi's premier commercial gallery, formally opened by Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

"Drosie died almost 20 years ago, and I've painted hundreds of pictures of our lives together. That's enough," says the artist whose Drosie series is best reflected in the Geneva-based Jean Pigozzi Collection of African Art, which is purported to be the largest African Art collection in the world.

The only collector who has more Drosie paintings is Sarenco himself who milked the artist for literally hundreds of artworks during the three year contracted relationship he bound Onyango to.

Promising the painter a salary of KSh10,000 per month, Onyango recalls that painful period when he often had to literally beg his agent for a thousand bob to buy amenities other than art supplies.

What Onyango really wanted the money for was to set up an Orphans Home in memory of Drosie who loved children and died before they could have any of their own.

But Sarenco wouldn't hear of handing over the cash owed the artist. "He'd hand me a thousand or two thousand at a time but never ten," Onyango recalled in an interview with www.africancolours.com just hours before the opening of the Watatu show, his first one man exhibition since 1992 when he showed at the Nairobi National Museum.

And so, just as soon as the contract expired, Onyango found means to meet up with some of Sarenco's clients, all of whom had been keen to meet the artist but had been blocked from so doing by the Italian.

Onyango still recalls the first time he was handed over KSh300,000. It was for six paintings at KSh50,000 each.

At the time, 1993, that seemed like a lot of money; however, today Onyango's art is selling for quite a bit more.

"I used half that money to buy the plot for the children's home," said Onyango who himself grew up as something of an orphan after his father, an engineer with the National Irrigation Board got relocated to Hola in the Tana River district, and the school fees sent for young Richard’s upkeep went from sporadic to nonexistent, resulting in his dropping out of school in Form Three.

"With the other half, I bought myself a car, a Datsun, that I planned to use as a taxi during low seasons," said the pragmatic former Coast bus driver.

Onyango's early years of driving, first for the Chinese construction company contracted to build the road from Garsen to Lamu, then as a solo taxi man, are clearly evident in the Watatu exhibition where his fascination for all sort of vehicles is obvious.

"I've always loved to travel, and I first dreamed of owning a Land Rover after I saw the one owned by my father's manager. I have one of my own today!" he proclaims proudly.

Onyango also has a huge motorcycle, which was one of the first items he bought after connecting with Sarenco's European clients, many of whom were either Swiss, German, Italian or French.

"I still have my motorcycle and my jacket, helmet, boots and gloves, and I've used it to travel all over Kenya," he says, recalling how easily he's made it from Malindi where he currently lives to Homa Bay in Nyanza Province where his father has stayed since his retirement in 1986.

It may be the shiny ‘bling’-like biker paraphernalia that's contributed to Onyango's getting the nickname 'MJ' meaning Michael Jackson, around Malindi.

But once the nickname stuck, Onyango had to find out who exactly was this man, Michael Jackson?

Ironically, there are visual similarities between the two, not just in their flamboyant style of dress and slender, agile body forms; but also in the fact that they both were musicians.

In fact, Onyango actually played percussion for a coastal band when he first saw Drosie in Mombasa in 1989.

"Every time, I did something special on the drums I saw her face light up and she smiled at me. After one show, she followed me and invited me for a lunch, and then again for a dinner..."

Onyango claims that his staunch Christian background didn't prepare him for the sexual advances that Drosie made on him.

But clearly, he succumbed!

"She took me to her residence at Nyali Beach and we stayed together happily for nearly a year," he recalls.

Drosie, who was eight years Onyango's senior, died prematurely, at age 29. Onyango believes it was because of her Kenya-Indian father's outrage at his daughter for shacking up with an African.

"After she died, I lived like a chokora (street boy) for many months," recalls Onyango. "I didn't know what to do. What I know now however is that Drosie made me the man I am today. She taught me to always tell the truth, and to be straight in everything I do."

It was Onyango's affinity for vehicles that pulled him through.

"I would sketch the buses and matatus, and sell the drawings to the drivers and conductors for Ksh20 each," he said.

One conductor took his drawing back to his boss, Mohammed Naji, who went looking for Onyango, not only to thank him for his art but to ask him to paint more buses, now on hard board with local house paint.

"That was the first time I realized art was important, that it could keep me from starving," said the artist who was literally at the point of starvation when he decided to pick up a pencil and draw, a gift he had discovered at age nine.

Naji also gave Onyango a lifetime free pass on his buses, and made him first a bus conductor and then an inspector. But the latter task was most difficult since the Indian only paid his employees fifty bob a day, and nobody could cope with so small a salary so they had learned to rob the boss blind.

"I left the job reluctantly, but I too couldn’t cope on fifty bob a day," he said.

Fortunately, in his darkest, most hungry hour, when prayer was Onyango's only recourse, he was guided to the Tana Hotel whose owner, Mohammed Bashrahid, knew him as both an artist and a competent driver. He sent him to Faisal Osman who insisted he meet his Italian friend Sarenco, which he did. The rest is now history!

Onyango will never forget the fact that Sarenco literally put his art on the map, exhibiting Drosie in major world art markets, from Milan to New York.

Richard Onyango Watatu Drosie

Drosie life size sculpture | Image by Andrew Njoroge, AfricanColours.com

Indirectly, it was also thanks to Sarenco that Onyango was led to meeting patrons like Jean Pigozzi who has taken the artist all over the world, from Monaco and Geneva to Manhattan and Milan.

"Pigozzi likes taking me with him when his art collection goes on tour, because I am there to answer people's questions about my art," he said.

Osei Kofi provided the Kenyan media a similar service just prior to the opening of Onyango's exhibition. The artist was in Nairobi to answer all the press people's probing questions, including queries about why he now focuses on Barack Obama and Michael Jackson and Princess Diana in this show?

Onyango admits it was Kofi who requested that he creates several series of iconic images, which is why one of his Obama portraits includes Michael Jackson and Nelson Mandela too!

Richard Onyango Watatu Kofi shows

Gallery Watatu MD Kofi Osei next to Onyango's depiction on Michael Jackson, Obama and Nelson Mandela

Onyango's Obama series may be the most intriguing and imaginative for Kenyans since we can see Obama, shirtless and relaxed, standing casually in South Nyanza. We can see him standing with Grandma Sarah near the Volkswagen Beetle he wrote about in his autobiography, Dreams of My Father, and we can even see that classic movement when the world felt the sea change affected by the first Black man ever getting elected president of the United States!

Richard Barack Obama

A relaxed Barack Obama | Image by Andrew Njoroge, AfricanColours.com

The Michael Jackson images may not be quite as exciting for some since they have something of a cartoonish quality to them. But his recollection of the Thriller music video comes alive with an eerie ferocity. Onyango himself admits he only got to know MJ well after he died, but he has been haunted by his persona ever since.

The other dead soul that inspired Onyango to paint was Princess Diana. Her portrait is less beautiful than the real Lady Di, but his surrealistic interpretation of the Elton John song, Candle in the Wind has a Salvadore Dali-esque quality about it that makes it quite special.

The most disturbing paintings in the One and Only Onyango show may be the ones of Deb Teiloghur, a woman most unlike her phonetical namesake Liz Taylor. This Teiloghur has been featured in Rupert Murdoch's now deceased sensational "News of the World" for being one of the fattest woman in the world.

Richard Onyango | Image by Andrew Njoroge, AfricanColours.com

"I used to believe that Drosie was the fattest woman in the world, but then I discovered Deb Teiloghor," says Onyango who admits Teiloghur can't replace Drosie in his heart, but as an iconic image, she will do.

And so, we see too much of Deb Teiloghur for my taste in this show.

Nonetheless, what cancels out the disturbingly fleshy forms (I was never a great fan of Drosie in Onyango's art) are his technically detailed trucks, buses, trains and ships, especially the ships seen in his magnificent diptych, Future of Port Lamu.

"It's a vision I had of the future. I saw Lamu bustling with activity; and frankly, this painting is not done. I plan to paint at least five or six more canvases since I havent finished painting the totality of my vision of the port."

Unfortunately, someone has already bought the diptych, so the fate of the finished painting is yet to be known.

Richard Onyango, Osei G Kofi and Margaretta wa Gacheru

Art writer Margaretta wa Gacheru, Gallery Watatu MD Osei G Kofi and Richard Onyango | Image by Andrew Njoroge, AfricanColours.com

In the meantime, Onyango claims he plans to retire quite soon. Yet given the global demand for his art, it is highly unlikely that Kenya's world acclaimed painter is going to put down his brushes very soon.

But he did manage to set up his children's home, where he has already educated the first six orphans, and is currently educating the second set of seven 14 years olds.

"The first six were boys; and now these seven are girls," says Onyango whose quiet philanthropy gives him immense satisfaction.

"I know Drosie would be proud of the home, and I'll keep it going in her memory," says the artist whose next projects are taking him into new territory.

"I want to do more sculpture and I want to invent many things. I have big dreams and I plan to make them all come true."

Posted By: Allan Kapten

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