Painting daily life’s colours
John Okurut explains some of his art pieces during the launch of his art exhibition at Protea Hotel in Entebbe last month. Photo by Rachel Mabala
What you need to know:
Artist John Okurut’s paintings mainly focus on daily life’s challenges and how we can live through them.
Holding an art exhibition on weekdays is tricky as one is not sure of the attendance. But John Okurut proved he is an art master as he managed to attract a sizeable attendance at the launch of his ongoing art exhibition last month at Protea Hotel, Entebbe.
A graduate of Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts, Okurut is a soft spoken man, who has been practising visual art for the last seven years and is happy to share his experience. The exhibition, highlighted by 16 pieces, is focused on daily life with reflections to true colours.
Okurut’s pieces depict life around us and the purpose of the exhibition is to acquire funds that would facilitate a charity project.
The medium used of acrylic on canvas makes the pieces look attractive.
The colours used clearly offer an appealing feel to interpret the message Okurut potrays in the art pieces.
From green, orange, purple and subtle blue used on one big piece titled Childhood development, most guests recommended and applauded the artist for the skills exhibited. The piece elaborates challenges children go through such as child abuse, that limit them from attaining their future goals.
On why he opted to paint about life, Okurut says he wanted to show the current image of society with various colour usage.
Okurut says he faces challenges such as lack of ideal venues for artists to exhibit, high costs of materials used such as canvas that is hard to find on the Ugandan market, lack of interest of the Ugandan community towards art, among others.
Okurut classifies himself as an artist who fits in any professional environment because to him, design is a series of exciting time journeys and stories that make up the modality of life.
“I love to work with an open mind as most of my works focus on combining a wide of range of media such as storytelling, painting and photography,” he says.
The exhibition runs up to December 20 at the same venue.
About some of the paintings
Waiting on a woman
The piece explains that men should keep calm as they wait for their women because they tend to take more time when preparing for something. For instance before they travel, women will spend time on makeup, shoes, manicure, pedicure jewellery etc. So men should know what pre occupies women’s minds before complaining that they are slow.
We belong together
The piece shows that people should live together in harmony despite their religious affiliations. The different colours used may explain Uganda’s current popular political parties with yellow as NRM, Blue for FDC, green for DP, red for UPC
Different colours
The piece portrays that we are all the same no matter the difference in colour, race, religion and tribe. The piece explains that we can freely move around the universe but still get back together as one people.
