Art exhibition: Adrian Nduma pops up in Nairobi’s Kitisuru

Speaking about pop-up artwork exhibitions, there are incredibly lots of that quietly choose area close to Nairobi curated by persons who admire a specific artist and want to share his or her art with buddies and family and other individuals who could share their adore for that innovative.

Most of these events acquire location without the need of fanfare or information media. In the meantime, the artist is ordinarily grateful for the exposure as was Adrian Nduma last Friday when one particular of his collectors, George Owuor, opened his dwelling and roomy back garden to far more than 30 of his stunning paintings.

Adrian Nduma’s artworks, in his solo pop up art exhibition in Kitisuru on July 20, 2023. Image | POOL

Mr Nduma does a matter with colours that is exceptional to his palette. He creates a luminosity with colour that would seem to emanate from inside of the canvas.

Not all his paintings have that influence. At the Owuor household, there ended up a person or two produced in stormy greys and black, suggesting storms about to invade.

Adrian Nduma’s painting, in acrylic on canvas in Kitisuru on July 20, 2023. Image | POOL

But then there is another operate in which a storm is brewing in the length and one particular can see a deluge of rain has currently started pouring down.

But in the foreground of the similar piece, that delicate sense of solarised colour is however there, enduring up until the sunshine is prevail over with rain-filled clouds.

Substantially of Mr Nduma’s approach is drawn from both equally the impressionist and realist universities even though he also experienced portraits and summary perform amongst his 30-as well as is effective on screen in Mr Owuor’s backyard garden as very well as in his dwelling room and foyer.

His landscapes are among my favourites, which are normally panoramic, reflecting Kenya’s correct organic elegance, which needs to be guarded from all the illegal loggers and miners and crooks who would rob the country of its one big asset, nature in all her diversity of colour, fauna and flora.

Mr Nduma himself has a interesting tale. He graduated from Kenyatta College in painting and graphic layout but quickly went 1st into training, then promotion, and banking exactly where he supervised other bankers initial at ILRI, then at the KCB department inside of USAID, and finally at the US embassy.

He was with the lender for five decades, when he was struck with the realisation that he experienced to be real to himself.

“There arrived a minute when I realised I had a greater contacting,” he advised BDLife just just before his Pop-Up exhibition opened in Kitisuru.

So all that banking and promotion was cast aside when he created his radical move in 2004 to his have studio and selected to come to be a expert painter total-time.

Adrian Nduma’s artworks, in his solo pop up artwork exhibition in Kitisuru on July 20, 2023. Picture | POOL

That was the same yr Mr Nduma proven his Bonzo Artwork Gallery on Ngong Highway, the place he shown his art as perfectly as that of younger students whom he mentored, like Coster Ojwang and other folks.

Sadly, he had to close Bonzo when Covid arrived to Kenya. But Covid didn’t shut down all the commission requests produced to Mr Nduma, which he had to finish for shoppers coming from all in excess of the planet.

When asked about where he has exhibited in and outside the country, he suggests he does not show in other art galleries due to the fact he has had his possess.

But he has participated in a lot of pop-ups like the 1 that Mr Owuor established for him last weekend. In any other case, he says his outreach is sweeping.

“My artwork is everywhere,” he admits. “It’s in the US, British isles and in international locations all above Europe, Australia, and Japan.”

As for previous Friday’s function, Mr Owuor has huge higher walls, which accommodated Mr Nduma’s big landscapes, seascapes, and his excellent chameleon, a function which reveals his uncanny means of conveying the creature’s keen intelligence.

Adrian Nduma, an artist in the course of his solo exhibition in Nairobi’s Kitisuru. Photograph | POOL

His marvellous perception of perspective provides realism to a operate like ‘The Migration’ which offers us the two a foreground loaded with wildlife and a background in which the skies are threatening weighty rains coming and which are by now pouring quick in the distance.

But he also presents an impressionistic, just about abstract picture of his wildlife which he hardly outlines. He only paints them as curved colors so that you know what they are intended to advise.

And as to why Mr Owuor handed above his home and back garden to Mr Nduma to current his newest performs, he claims he had been ready for this time as he’s been an ardent lover of the artist’s work at any time because he 1st noticed it numerous decades back.

“I understood virtually very little about artwork until eventually I saw my first portray by Adrian,” Mr Owuor told BDLife. “Ever due to the fact then I’ve loved his paintings and needed to have a exhibit like this in my home. I’m delighted it is last but not least taking place.”

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