Mabula�s art on the walls
Thato Kala | Friday April 11, 2014 12:06
The inn is just 15 minutes away from the majestic Victoria Falls and about 10 minutes from Mosi-a-tunya National Park.
The owner wants visitors to depict certain archaeological and tourist attractions found around his native country.
“Those pictures should give people the urge to visit those places,” says Wilfred Chewe, the owner of the lodge. With exquisite architectural details already in place, Mabula knows all that the owners need is his magic touch to add richly coloured walls. The facility has a bar overlooking a peanut-shaped pool, rooms that surround the swimming pool in a horseshoe arrangement.
The diminutive artist’s mission includes painting landscapes, waterfalls and wildlife ahead of its official opening in June.
“I have to paint different tourist attractions like Victoria Falls, Lower Zambezi National Park and the African liberation struggle heroes right round the conference room,” says Mabula.
The Siviya-born artist is particularly delighted that tourists from all over the world will see his works and considers this a lifetime opportunity.
Livingstone draws a lot of tourists, especially from Europe who visit to witness the Victoria Falls from the Zambia side. Two countries, Zambia and Zimbabwe, share the seventh world wonder. “This is a blessing to me because I get to showcase my talent in a new lodge, in a foreign land and in a place that attracts a lot of tourists,” he says.
The opportunity also comes with the demand for him to venture into painting landscapes.
Mabula has made his name for being the Ndebele artist devoted to preserving culture with his works.
He has always considered it some sort of ‘exclusive right’ to be that one budding artist preserving a culture he has only heard of from his grandparents. A quick run through his work shows he hardly uses dark colours. The dominant colours in his works are red, yellow and blue.
Admittedly, he will use any of those colours even in places seemingly unrelated.
“I can draw a figure of a woman and paint it blue,” he says. Interestingly, before the Tasha Lodge project, his work had only been as far as his colourful miniature paintings. He has also never worked on canvas before, but started getting tutorials on how to prepare canvas, mix paints and brush strokes early this year. Painting the walls of Tasha Lodge is a new venture for him.
“This is some sort of expansion for my art. I have sought the help of a colleague who gave me free tutorials with the use of acrylic paints and landscape paintings,” says the artist.
Mabula whose artworks run under the company Fixsketchiz landed the job in January and has been preparing for it since then.
He says: “I met the owner, Wilfred Chewe, sometime last year and we exchanged numbers. He gave me a call this year in January inviting me to come and do murals for his new lodge in Zambia.” Chewe advised the artist to identify student artists in colleges and schools to work with and come up with paintings that can depict archaeological and tourist sites in Botswana.
He travels to Livingstone later this month.
The 26-year-old looks forward to experiencing a different culture and seeing the works of other artists in the neighbouring country. He will spend two weeks in Livingstone.
Says he: “This will be a great learning experience in all fronts. I need to turn this into a business, not just a means of exploring talent.”
Fixsketchiz specialises in portrait works and with the use of pencil as Mabula’s medium of work. Mabula will also do signage and branding for the lodge. “I will not be in a hurry to get back home. I would love to spend more time to explore my market and come back home a happy guy,” says Mabula. He will be taking little-known artist Kabo Chuma along with him.
“I chose to work with two other local artists who I usually work with. I believe the more we help each other as artists is the more we have that sense of workmanship and sharing of ideas,” he says. He adds that the two share lots of experience and knowledge on art and wants them to expand their spheres of influence.
While the Livingstone expedition is quite an exciting one for him, he maintains the need to preserve African culture through art saying, “Art is one of the means to do that”.
Last year, he turned his back on Gaborone to go and settle in Siviya where his father is a chief.
“It’s quite refreshing, Gaborone is too crowded and puts me under a lot of pressure,” he had said at the time. He testifies today that change of environment is fundamental for any artist.
Mabula fell in love with art while at Tlokweng CJSS. Art was an obvious A for him at school and he boasts of 25 art certificates at home.
He credits his cousin Joseph Manyama, who is also into art, for buttressing his passion.
He says: “He inspired my art, he taught me painting but I did not like it.” In his childhood, he recalls how he would draw cartoons in church in relation to what the pastor would be preaching about. After school he took up a Graphic Design course at Limkokwing University of Creative Arts, but says he lost interest along the way and subsequently dropped out. “That’s where I struggled a lot – I was cut off because of poor performance,” he says.
The pint-sized artist quickly put the disastrous school experience at the back of his mind and set his sights on art. He was invited to be part of the inaugural Botswana Fashion Week. He did live drawing at the event as he would sketch portraits of people in about 10 minutes.
Thereafter, Btv Sedibeng programme interviewed him and he knew his bread would be buttered by his childhood passion, art. He then took his art to clothing last year to create his own line called BBM.
“I’ve never had permanent employment because I believe my job is art,” he says.