There is something about weather beaten walls that attracts artists… the torn posters, graffiti, smooth stones beneath crumbling plaster, the faded layers of paint.

It is as though the time layered into these walls prompts remembrances of the passing of their own lives and encourages artists to pin them down before the memories disappear.

Such an artist from East Africa would be Miriam Syowia Kyambi who captured the sun bleached walls of Mexico City in a series of collages and woodcuts.

Another would be Beatrice Wanjiku, recently returned from a two month fellowship in the US, who has created her own peeling walls of remembrance.

To do so, she has utilised a technique that is becoming a nervous tic among Kenyan artists… the dribbling of white paint down the canvas.

It creates a veil between the subject and viewer, at once mysterious and inviting.

Peer deeper and discover the secrets of my art. Be intrigued and mystified by my elusiveness, it seems to say.

Current practitioners include Xavier Verhoest, who might have started the trend and Paul Onditi, as well as Wanjiku, who is currently showing some 16 pictures — 11 oils and five small collages — at the One-Off Gallery in Rosslyn, Nairobi. The show continues until February 19.

Their controlled dribbling of white paint is quite different from the accidental splashes that may occur in a spontaneous ink sketch, or from the spots and trickles that result from a frenzied attack on the canvas with an overloaded brush, which embedded in the overall vision, are allowed to stand as hallmarks of the picture’s energy.

Other artists, noting the powerful effect of these accidental splashes, began to make them deliberately, but used them differently.
Instead of adding a dimension of urgency and excitement typical of neo-expressionists like Jesse Ng’ang’a, they became veils behind which the artists’ meaning could be concealed. But like all veils they offered the promise of eventual revelation.