Mutare – An art exhibition titled Tenacity: Celebrating The Artist’s Journey at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Mutare has been running since the beginning of February.
The bulk of the work includes realistic and abstract paintings on canvas.
I couldn’t help but notice the recurring theme of “suffering” in a lot of the work.
Someone once mentioned that good art comes from suffering.
This made me ponder if suffering is an unavoidable or necessary part of the artist’s journey.
Is this a Zimbabwean or universal phenomenon?
Can one live in luxury and still make good art?
Looking back at my ongoing art journey, I can safely say it has been a bittersweet rollercoaster trip.
The bitter part includes depression, alcoholism, suicidal thoughts, fear, anger, frustration, and disillusionment.
The sweet part includes unexpected sales, meeting like-minded creatives & philosophers, and knowing that one can endure hardship on their path to artistic fulfilment/success.
You see, in 2012 I decided to drop out of a degree in Biochemistry to pursue a full-time art career.
This was in my final semester. After four years of fees.
My parents and peers couldn’t take any of this.
“Why don’t you just finish then find a job and do art on the side?” they would ask.
Very logical I agree.
Fortunately, I stuck to my decision.
After leaving school, I couldn’t live at home anymore because of the constant back-and-forth war of words and actions with my parents.
I moved in with Kudakwashe Mupamhanga (now Deputy Minister of Youth Empowerment & Skills Training), a friend and high school classmate from Kutama Boys.
He lived in Eastlea, Harare.
We would brainstorm endlessly about a lot of creative ideas.
I spent six months at his residence before moving to Mbare.
Here I met fellow “starving artists” among whom I felt understood.
One of these artists was Wisdom Wangani, an extraordinary painter and survivor.
We would walk long distances to source materials and inspiration even when we had transport money.
He would tell me about his adventures in Capetown, South Africa.
The art scene there was phenomenal he would say.
This kept me going.
As fate had it, I would be called for an interview in Cape Town the same year.
The artwork there blew my mind.
I stayed there for six months in a township called Khayelitsha.
The unbelievable series of events that happened during this time needs a whole book to tell.
I came back from South Africa “empty-handed”.
A lot of people back home in Shamva expected I’d come back financially better off.
I was worse off.
I laugh every time I think about this.
What they did not understand, however, was that I had gotten intangible treasure vital for an artist.
I had seen the power and value of art.
I had seen successful artists who had started worse than me.
I had seen a fully functional art ecosystem.
I had gotten a decade’s supply of inspiration.
I tried to explain this to anyone who would listen but to no avail.
I could not understand why society could not understand someone like myself.
My answer came one day when I was flipping through one of my mother’s (MHSRIP) work magazines called Teacher’s Forum.
This particular issue was published in 1992.
A reader had written to the editor saying:
“Dear Editor,
It is well known that art was deliberately left out of the black curriculum by the Rhodesian regime.
We are now more than a decade after independence.
What have we done about this?”
Now, I understand why township society viewed art as a hobby. As some pastime that needed no intellectual effort whatsoever.
This realisation shook me.
Very few township folk knew that there are universities around the world that focus exclusively on the visual arts.
It is common to hear a parent in the township scold their child saying: “Hey, put those stupid drawings away and go read your mathematics book!”
I am a little hopeful now that the reviewed Zimbabwe public curriculum has taken art a bit more seriously.
Of course, more work needs to be done.
Art and educational institutions need to work more and more with practicing artists.
It is now more than a decade since I started my journey as a professional artist.
In his book “Outliers” Malcolm Gladwell popularised the idea that it takes at least 10 000 hours of practice to be an expert at any endeavour or to master a skill.
I am happy to have showcased my work in places like South Africa, the U.S.A., The Netherlands, Qatar, England, Japan, and Canada.
The list keeps growing.
Such stories need to be told.
It is my wish to walk into libraries in Zimbabwe and go to a section titled “Artist’s Biographies”.
Why not?
I am excited to look back and meditate on hurtful but necessary events in my journey whilst looking forward to the soothing ones in the future.
Aluta Continua!
