George Kyeyune is a graduate artist with degrees from the Margaret Trowell School of Fine Arts (now the Dean of Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts), Makerere University, Uganda and the Maharaja Sayajiraho University of Baroda, India. In 1990 he took up a teaching position in Sculpture at Makarere Art School. In 1999 he received a Commonwealth scholarship for doctoral study in the history of African art at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His studies focus specifically on changes and developments in Uganda’s visual art in the twentieth century. He is a member of the Ngoma International Artists Workshop. He is now the dean of the school of industrial and fine art.
Below are two examples of George's paintings and a fine example of one of his sculptures.
Michael Kibuuka who often goes by the name of Cliff has been
practicing art since 1996 and on a professional level since 2005. He has developed a passion for painting real life, and especially birds, reptiles, butterflies, insects, fish, and other animals.
But he critically looks at his own work he is forced to consider himself as a landscape painter as the majority of his works fall into this category.
These range from town settings, vegetation, swamps, hills and other similar scenes. He is always on a look out for good scene to paint. When he finally comes across one, the only thing that crosses his mind is to paint it.
Though he is obsessed with painting landscapes, it's worth mentioning that he rarely paint the scene the way it appears in nature. He always make his work more complex by creating something new out of that particular scene and develop something like a puzzle or mystery around it.
Cliff's work cannot however be defined as one particular style.
Depending on the viewer, his work is usually classified in three different styles - impressionism, realism, abstract, and at times all three in one painting!
He usually works with oil on canvas. Though at times I experiment with pastels and water-colour. He applies the oil with a combination of brushes, palette knife and at time the roller comes in when working on bigger formats.
Cliff has participated in four exhibitions - two at the Makerere Art Gallery and two at Ndere Centre in Kissasi.
At one of the Kissasi exhibitions he received the special honour of having one of his paintings bought by the Kabaka of Buganda (Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II). Also this event gave Cliff a lot of exposure as it was featured on 'Showtime Magazine' (WBS television) and also got coverage in the two of Kampala's newspapers.
Cliff has a Bachelors Degree in Industrial and Fine Art from Makerere University.
Below we can see two fine examples of his paintings.
Click here to visit Michael Kibuuka's gallery shop
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Contemporary Art in Uganda is nourished by artists with fertile minds and talent recognised for their progressive achievements, not only at home but internationally. Sanaa is one of these artists with an extraordinary attitude and relationship to the material he uses as a painter, designer, teacher and innovator. His life as an artist starts as far back as when he was Uganda’s Art Culture Representative at Osaka Expo in Japan at a very early age.
Teacher
As a resident artist at the Commonwealth Institute in London Sanaa’s teaching of Art and Culture was instrumental in the formation of a Multicultural Teaching in the British School Curriculum in 1897. Saana is passionate about Africa and his departure from canvas to bark cloth is significant. He adopted bark cloth as his main media for art, fashion and interior design to create a Ugandan idiom and a place in the Art of the world. Recently UNESCO exhibited Sanaa;s work at the lauch of the Bark cloth as a Ugandan Cultural Treasure and Heritage. He is currently working with the University of North Texas on utilising the material in many other forms for a major bark cloth exhibition in 2010.
He is recognised for his contribution to poverty alleviation through innovations in recycling of paper to make jewellery. It is now 19 years since he introduced this now Ugandan success. You will see many women selling beads in markets but the bigger markets are International. The Royal tropical Institute in Amsterdam exhibited Sanna’s designs using recycled paper in their museum last year.
Painter:
Sanaa’s art work was auctioned for US$10,000 at a recent Technology Entertainment & Design (TED) conference in Ngorogoro Mountain Lodge in Arusha, Tanzania. The money is helping to finance the next TED conference in Africa – probably in South Africa.
The field museum has a collection of Sanaa’s work on bark cloth. Novotel Kigali has a permanent exhibition of his paintings on bark cloth in the main hotel lobby since 2004.
Designer:
Sanaa was selected with other designers from Africa to an international African traveling Exhibition called Made In Africa and sponsored by the City of Saint Etienne in France. It went to nearly all the major cities of the continents 2006/07. He represented Ugandan design at the Gwanjgju Design Biennale 2007 in Seoul, South Korea with his work in recycling of paper.
For a couple of centuries, the art of painting on glass has been entirely for religious architectural settings, especially churches. You could hardly find stained glass art works in Uganda in any building with no religious inclination. All this is now history, as a revolution is on to introduce this art form into secular environments as championed by Muwonge Mathias Kyazze.
Muwonge has been a practicing artist for nearly two decades. He holds a Masters’ Degree in Fine Art and a higher Diploma in Stained Glass. To him, stained glass is just another form/medium for artistic expression through which he has executed works on diverse subjects both religious and secular. Muwonge’s mission is to create awareness that this art form exists outside religious environments by which it has been imprisoned for centuries.
He has put up several solo and group exhibitions in Uganda, Europe and America. His Stained glass works done from Nsambya Stained glass workshop, a Catholic Church founded project, have been installed in various churches across the great lakes region. However, his most outstanding works were installed in Biina Church – Luzira Kampala in 2000. In these works, he skillfully presented Biblical stories using Ugandan cultural forms like “Ekyoto” (fire place) which is just a small unit of a several metre artistic story line.
Away from Stained glass glazing, Muwonge also commands an incredible mastery of painting with oils on canvas. For both media (stained glass and oils), he derives his subjects from Ugandan life styles. “ I always want my stained glass paintings to look Ugandan to reflect the rich social-cultural Ugandan art forms” says Muwonge. This ideology is tremendously manifested in his works like “Busuuti” (Ganda attire), “Bakisiimba” (ganda dance), “Okwanjula” (Introduction) and “Mothery”.
Muwonge is not bound by any specific palette but rather works with a prolific mastery of colour themes based on subject matter. However, he uses very bright colours to make the works attractive and inviting, which reflect the life styles of Ugandans and the warm weather. In his works “self” and “style”, he creates an exciting mood using semi-abstract forms and lovely colours.
All said and done, Muwonge Kyazze is a man on a mission to “bring home” stained glass and in so doing, is producing many portable art works for various architectural setting as a way of exposing this art form. He is also teaching this subject at a University level in order to tap fresh talent. Muwonge is slowly transforming the once alien Christian art into a contemporary medium of artistic expression.
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