Rare glimpse into a troubled mind

If one was to measure the body of artworks that Boniface Maina has created since he began painting more than seven years ago, you would be amazed to find how massive, diverse and imaginative his creative output has been.

Like many young Kenyan artists, Mr Maina has been experimental in his genres, styles and themes. Nonetheless, the co-founder of Brush Tu Art Studio (with David Thuku and Michael Musyoka) has been consistent in his painting with brushes.

He has also tried out various art materials such as instant coffee which he uses to achieve the golden brown hue that appears in his paintings currently on display at The Art Space in Nairobi’s Westlands.

His Art Space exhibition entitled ‘Line of Inquiry’ reflects a departure from his past paintings of theatrical backdrops and set designs with Mr Thuku and Mr Musyoka for the Kenya School Drama Festival.

Mr Maina has gone through many phases and stages, with his surrealist works being (for me) some of the most fascinating, cryptic and challenging of all his art up to now.

Surrealist art has its roots in 20th century Europe and can be seen most prominently in the paintings of artists like Salvador Dali, Joan Miro and Rene Magritte. What is distinctive about their style is their exploration of the subconscious mind.

Mr Maina has made an artistic leap from the surreal to further inquiries into the subconscious, even to the point of delving into the writings of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis.

Freud felt that if one could find ways to unlock or access the subconscious, he could find answers to issues related to one’s latent anxieties and generally to learn more about one’s self.

So Mr Maina’s personal queries into issues of self and the subconscious are undoubted why his art has made a similar quantum shift from painting the social and figurative to now painting art that’s more abstract, psychological and aimed at unlocking that inscrutable, invisible layer of the human mind.

Open up

This is the ‘line of inquiry’ that the painter is currently following. Again, it’s highly experimental but aimed at opening up personal issues that the artist hasn’t previously touched upon.

A painter who always have a warm and welcoming smile on his face, one can hardly suspect that Mr Maina has his demons and dark side; but his paintings—or at least their titles —strongly suggest that he’s got deeper issues that come out in his art, as in works entitled ‘‘Sucked into the Abyss’’, ‘‘Displacement’’, ‘‘Undoing’’ and ‘‘Face to Face with Fear.’’

At his recent exhibition opening, he admitted he had even begun to question his own sanity and contemplated going for a brain scan.

He never did, but then, the painting he calls ‘‘MRI Results’’ outlines an image that is more whimsical, witty than dark and disturbing.

Coffee powder

Without the titles, the paintings, designed with the coffee powder randomly poured onto moist water colour paper and then allowed to dry, create shapes that could be anything.

That’s where his artistic eye comes in; he uses ink to draw whatever images he sees emerging from the powder’s serendipitous shapes and the lines derived (theoretically) from his conscious or subconscious mind.

The art serves as something like a Rorschach Inkblot test in that each image may (or may not) send the artist (and us the public) a message that is relevant to the artist’s emotions or past experience. It might even trigger latent memories previously buried deep inside the psyche.

Or possibly none of those things will happen to you when you go to see Mr Maina’s work at the Art Space; but that won’t matter since the abstract images he has conceived are evocative and another experimental moment in his quest to express himself through his art.