Conservation art: Simon etches an ode for his troubled neighbour

Simon Muriithi is pictured with his artwork displayed at One Off Contemporary Art Gallery in Nairobi on January 29, 2025.

Photo credit: Bonface Bogita | Nation Media Group

Simon Muriithi is a patient man and a tad reserved about himself. When I finally find him hunched over a painting in one of the many foyers of the One-Off Art Gallery, it's an hour past our scheduled meeting. I blame it on the Nairobi rains.

He is talking to Carol Lees, the host for his latest exhibition currently ongoing that is dubbed My Troubled Neighbour, an ode to mother nature and the constant tiffs with man.

The exhibition is a showcase of everything that nature has to offer, from its symphonies to all types of flora and fauna, as seen from the eyes of a man who describes his life as a smothering by nature.

It plays for a large part with shades of black and white with pattered lines that stick out on paper in an almost braille like imaging. Simons art is not only seen but it can also be felt.

“Doing embossed art, I had in mind that even a blind person would be able to enjoy the work I have done,” says Simon.

Most artists have a definitive moment when they found themselves drawn to are. Simon just found himself in art.

“We are all born artists, its only that we don’t realise, we are artists. I am glad I realised it earlier than most. The day I was born, I started art by scribbling the air first, then paper later on.”

He is a multimedia artist who paints, draws and sculpts. In the My Troubled Neighbour exhibition he leans wholly on etching and embossing, his specialty craft. He has chosen to use only two medium, linoleum and cardboard.

Etching and embossing on paper artwork done by Simon Muriithi displayed at One Off Contemporary Art Gallery in Nairobi on January 29, 2025.

Photo credit: Bonface Bogita | Nation Media Group

“Etching and embossing is a technique I found accidentally. After printing for a long time, I found myself leaning towards it more in my creative ventures,” he says.

It's a style he has learned to appreciate after years of experimenting.

“The world is all about movement especially with art. You cannot always stay in the same place for too long. You can look at it from the context of walking, whereby you may start on a flat ground and end on a hill. That is how my art has evolved. I just took the small steps and before I realised, I found myself here,” he says while gesticulating at the gallery packed with his exhibits.

With etching, one use metals and acids to create images on a special type of paper. Simon, however, doesn’t use acids but rather relies on drypoint etching, an environmentally friendlier engraving technique where a printed design is scratched directly on a metal plate with a special needle to come up with images on paper.

“Being a conversationalist, I realised that when I used acids, I would have to pour them somewhere and end up destroying the environment which is against my personal beliefs.”

For the metal medium in his works, Simon prefers using aluminum sheets which he passes through a press to come up with the images in his paintings.

His etching press, as he shows me from his studio, is an old relic which he says was used to press and print newspapers more than half a century ago.

“Artists are usually left with old things that no one wants to use anymore and they have to make something out of them,” he says laughing.

He uses a felt to ink his aluminum plates that are put on a larger linoleum block and then passed through a printer to come up with the images seen on his paintings.

The paper he uses to engrave and emboss his images has to be wet and of a certain thickness (from 250mg and upwards) or his work will be ruined.

The process is as intricate. With patience and precision, the as the series of patterned lines eventually form the images on his paintings.

The title of the exhibition stems from his relationship with nature.

Etching and embossing on paper artwork done by Simon Muriithi displayed at One Off Contemporary Art Gallery in Nairobi on January 29, 2025.

Photo credit: Bonface Bogita | Nation Media Group

“Nature is my mother. I want to always talk about the environment because I was raised by nature itself. My inspiration mostly comes from the conflict between man and nature. My troubled neighbour is always the animals or the plants we have interfered with.”

Musical instruments etchings have also found themselves in his paintings because he feels music is a part of the environment and whereas sometimes it may not be tuned, it still forms a part of the harmony of the ecosystem.

Woodcut works are the most colourful items in the exhibition. He says it took painstaking work to come up with them in a process called reduction that chips wood off entirely until he is left with a picture on one side and a cinder of wood on the other.

He downplays the unique nature of his art choosing to stand on the principle that all artists are unique on the basis of how they see and interpret their inspirations.

“We are all different and someone else cannot stand where I am and even if they do, they cannot see things from the same perspective. It is just like fingerprints, there is nothing grand about having different fingerprints because we are all unique by the design of nature.”

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