Art moderates Kanama�s ups and downs
Chippa Legodimo | Friday January 16, 2015 12:35
This passion was further fuelled when he passed art as a subject at secondary school. That gave him the energy to pursue art during his tertiary education. His further studies were on design, history of art and painting.
But the Zimbabwean artist is not only chasing a passion. Art has a deeper meaning to him.
“Art is the only thing that moderates the ups and downs I might be facing at any particular time. Every line in drawing or color on a painting is the resemblance of what I felt during the making of that art,” he said.
Kanama wants to broaden his scope and is currently studying graphic design in Canada. He does fine art in his spare time.
“My sketching skills elevated to the heights after I quit work to go back to school to further my career in 1999 at National Art Gallery of Zimbabwe (BAT), where I was studying for my A level art and AA arts Certificate.
The school had a positive influence and hard art discipline, pushing you to think out of the box,” he told Arts&Culture.
Kanama is an impressionist of note. His sketches demonstrate a deep-rooted skill for using both pencil and paint brush to produce human-interest pieces. His impression of human portraits show how his sharp eyes easily translate human skin tones and features into meaningful crisscrossing lines, which end up forming an identifiable face.
A typical example is his conversion of American musician Joe’s camera photo into a pencil sketch portrait, which he posted on Facebook. Since moving to Canada, Kanama has observed vast differences in art practice.
“Having stayed in Africa and Canada, the palate in art is quite different. In Africa there are a lot of talented people, the art you find in most places here is what I might put as high school level in Africa in terms of places and galleries I have visited,” he said.
However, Kanama emphasised that in terms of art appreciation, Africans were still lacking behind compared to the Canadians. “The flipside is that you cannot make a living from art alone in Africa. It is widely looked down on by society, to the extent that the only way to make a lot of money is when you are lucky to get foreigners invest in you or just survival money as a art market vendor,” he said.
Kanama is yet to complete his fine art studies but if early impressions of his work are anything to go by, he is destined for success.