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The artist known as Chinyama
Jonathan Mbiriyamveka, African Colours
June 29, 2006

http://zimbabwe.africancolours.net/content/9816

David Chinyama, Zimbabwean artist

David Chinyama, a young Zimbabwean abstract painter's works demand much from those who encounter his paintings. His paintings confront people and bring them face to face with his reality, moods, feelings and what he sees around him.

Contrary to popular belief that good paintings are figurative, Chinyama's abstract paintings convey the beauty of art in every day life. To the ordinary eye, the paintings are just but textured canvases splashed by oil paint, acrylic and varnish and at times stuck with functional objects such as the used gas skirt, bicycle handles or reinforcement wires.

But critically, Chinyama's intellectual ability to conjure up the pictorial constructs of space, line, and colour to heighten the expressive quality for the subject matter reflects the extent of his formal training.

"I see art where most people do not and this has made my work more interesting and all the more different from the others. People should appreciate my work for what it is, for instance by scribbling one or two brushes on canvas and make people believe that it is a good piece of art," Chinyama said in an interview recently. This young painter has a penchant to portray his own moods more than anything else and through texture his visual messages become vivid and glaring. He heaps up cloth in his canvases to convey lumps of burnt earth in a series of haunting paints, which deal with the destruction of the land and its inhabitants. He uses paint in such a way that it seems burnt and charred at the edges so as to create a veldt fire, or the way the sword of the setting sun strikes the grasses pink.Chinyama communicates on a human level concerning issues that affect ordinary Zimbabweans such as Operation Murambatsvina/Restore, a clamp down on illegal structures in towns and cities.

Of late, there have been destitutes in the city of Harare. Apparently, this is captured in Chinyama's painting titled Destitute in Foreign Land. Perhaps if he wanted to be subtler, he could have named the piece Destitute in Motherland. About the piece, we see a shantytown contrasted by different colours that highlight poverty and gloomy imageries. Paintings liked October Red, depict summer time in Zimbabwe when the sun seems to turn everything red. We see abstract buildings on a textured canvas, acrylic and varnish which give a fine finish that shows the intrinsic calibre of his works. But on this piece, Chinyama says some of the problems that befell people are of their making. He says it is good for people to work hard and be proud of who they are rather than sit on their laurels waiting for handouts. In a way, the painting also acts as a campaign against laziness or what is known as the dependency syndrome.

Other pieces to marvel at include Grasslands, Creation of a Woman, Boats & Beauty and Model. On Boats & Beauty, Chinyama reveals his love for the boats on the dock and the blue-like seawaters. Although he admits to having been inspired by his long time ally - Masimba Hwati, Chinyama is influenced by acclaimed artists like the late Hillary Kashiri and Jackson Pollock, an American painter whom he also referred to as his mentor.

Chinyama has exhibited locally and abroad. He also won the National Arts Merit Award in 2003, a top accolade in visual art and recently he was part of a collaborative effort during the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA). Currently, he together with Hwati is on a month-long exhibition called Project Veneka (Enlighten) in Botswana's capital Gaborone at the Thapong Visual Art Centre, the biggest art institution in Gaborone.

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