Curator’s mother exhibits solo at new Karen gallery

The Polka Dot Gallery in Karen, Nairobi officially opens next month, but the founder curator, Lara Ray, is so energised she couldn’t wait to go artistically operational, albeit informally.

Situated inside the Souk on Dagoretti Road, just across the road from The Hub, Polka Dot opened early for another reason.

Lara’s mother, Sophie Walbeoffe, a water colourist and a world-travelled landscape painter will be having a solo exhibition before leaving for London.

“I wanted to open the Polka Dot with an exhibition of my mother’s artwork. I also wanted her show to be up before she left town,” says Lara who admits her mum has been a tremendous source of inspiration.

Gyotaku paintings

Her mother has always encouraged her to follow the dream she had nurtured from an early age, to open an art gallery.

And like her mum, Lara, 26, has grown up surrounded by fine art.

“My mother’s great great grandfather started the Courtlauld Institute, a leading art institution in London. It’s also one that has the largest collections of impressionist paintings in the world,” says Sophie.

The Devon-born artist recalls the way she often visited The Courtlauld when growing up, never doubting she would one day become a professional painter.

For its premier exhibition, the Polka Dot Gallery has filled almost every inch of its pristine walls with works from Sophie’s studio (a sunny high-ceilinged set of rooms that she designed and built herself).

It features a wide range of oil paintings and water colours as well as one Gyotaku print and even several charcoal life-drawings.

“Gyotaku is an age-old Japanese technique of printing that was created by fishmongers [before the invention of photography] as a means of advertising their daily catch which they stored inside a cold-box,” says Sophie whose print features images of fresh Grouper and Koli on Chinese rice paper.

Sophie is known for painting ‘in situ’ (or on-site, also known as ‘plein air’) where she starts out working with water colours and painting with both hands, a remarkable technique that she learned from one of her lecturers at the Wimbleton School of Art.

Ritual in Lamu

Then she takes her water colour sketches home where rather than using photography, she works from her memory to paint only now in richly coloured oils.

Having performed this painterly ritual in many parts of the world, including Lamu where her water colours will soon be published in a book commissioned by the German philanthropist (and founder of the Lamu Painters Festival) Herbert Menzer, the majority of works in her Polka Dot show will be the ones she has created in Kenya.

This includes her wildlife paintings and etchings, landscapes of The Ewaso Ng’iro and Kilimanjaro, still-lifes and one portrait.

“The portrai of the [Samburu] herdsman, Prame, who looks after our camels,” says Sophie referring to the camel herd that her husband Dr Piers Simpkin started some years back while researching for his Ph.D from Cambridge University.

Artist friends

Camels are not featured in her Polka Dot show; but over at the Sankara Hotel, Sophie has a three-meter charcoal drawing of several camels from the family herd that she and Piers keep at Shaba.

It’s one of three paintings that is part of the current show that One Off Gallery’s Carol Lees curated for the Sankara Hotel.

Sophie has exhibited in Jerusalem and London among other cities. She hopes to bring her artists friends to exhibit at Lara’s Polka Dot Gallery.

“In fact, she’ll be having at least one major exhibition every year that she’ll hold at the exhibition hall at The Hub,” Sophie says.