Sane
WADU (Walter Njugana Mbugua) (1954) [view
available works from this artist]
Sane Wadu was born in 1954 in Nyathuna,
Kenya. In the early 80's, after completing high school,
he worked as a teacher and later as a court clerk. Wadu
is a poet and a writer, he wrote plays and poetry.
Sane Wadu began painting professionally
in 1985. He used mainly water-colours and household paints
on clothing and sheets of plastic. His
eccentricity became a subject of ridicule among friends
and neighbours and they began to refer to him as "insane",
especially since he gave up a secure career as a teacher
and clerk in pursuit of painting, which to most was an
abnormality. His
response to their taunts was to adopt the name Sane which
later became his nom de plume.
Later he took up oils and moved from clothing
and plastic to paper and canvas. Though he had received
no formal training, his creativity and drive quickly secured
him a national and international audience. He has had
one-man exhibitions in New York and his work has been
shown in the USA and Europe.
Formally, Sane Wadu's paintings have alternated
between structured single-point perspective and abstract,
dreamlike compositions and forms. He has moved between
a tight, impressionistic style and flowing, Surrealistic
abstracts - sometimes applying paint in constrained impasto,and
sometimes in bright, fluid washes.
Wadu's choice of subject matter has also
followed a shifting and varied course. Early works often
show the wildlife of rural Kenya; hyenas, buffaloes, leopards,
and elephants are depicted in isolation in a characteristic
wide landscape of distant horizons and soft, muted colors.
Though he explains that his inspiration was often the
sight of these creatures, the paintings are more than
merely descriptive. Placing them in a wild, unpopulated
landscape, Wadu says he also pounders the thoughts in
the animals' heads.
Sane Wadu paints the bush people as solitary
figures, like his wild animals. Alongside camels, sheep,
or cattle is the lone herdsman, the solo traveler. United
through their labors with the environment in which they're
set, the figures confront the viewer with a forth-right
gaze and open, naive honesty - attributes paralleled by
Wadu's style itself. In conception, his people are no
different from his animals.
Just as he works to grasp the consciousness
of wildlife, many works are self-portraits in the roles
of his subjects in order to attain a closer empathy with
the people he depicts. He is the Virgin Mary, the farm
worker, the lover.
Currently
Sane Wadu lives in Naivasha, Kenya with his family - his
wife Eunice Wadu is also an artist, and he regularly conduces
art workshops in schools and local community centers.
Since the 90's, Sane Wadu's paintings
have entered an urban environment and his compositions
have become more abstract. On his increasingly crowded
canvases, the figures press forward and outward, their
massed humanity laid ever more bare.
source: "Contemporary
African Art from the Jean Pigozzi collection", Sotheby's;
Africa-Can.org, "Contemporary Art of Africa",
A. Magnin
Sane
Wadu at his studio in Naivasha (c) 2006
Selected Exhibitions
Interview
with the artist
Sane Wadu GALLERY
