Kateete’s career celebrates faith, culture and heritage

Simple. Unassuming. Immensely gifted. Leonard Kateete has used his artistic talent to paint people of different communities around Africa as part of visibly illustrious documentation of the rich heritage that traditionally and culturally defines them.

He has creatively developed works among 32 tribal homesteads, including the surviving member of the last Emperor of Ethiopia’s regime, the Lugbara of Nile Valley in Arua, the El Molo people of the North Eastern Province of Kenya, Chaga of Tanzania, Baganda and Karimojong central and north eastern Uganda, Dinka of Sudan, and many more.

His artistic mosaics prominently hang in a number of churches in East Africa and his portraits in homes of art lovers.

Through it all, he says he enjoyed his painting time among the peaceful Somalis and was overwhelmed with fear among the Melile of Ethiopia.

“On the fourth day as I waited for breakfast, there were these boys who came and had a conversation with this foreigner - the only man who had dared to go and live among them. I brought out my sketch book and started sketching them. One or two of the kids walked around and saw what I was doing and called the others to see what I had drawn,” he says.

They said the artist was going to make money out of them. A quarrel ensued between the young man and the wife of Kateete’s host. She chased them away but Kateete decided to halt the project.

“Due to a lot of fear, I never completed the work and I am yet to do the retouches,” he adds. That is part of the price the artist has paid for things he holds dear- culture and heritage

He argues that generally the history of any culture depends on what has been kept, adding that whereas photography has been used, it mainly captures prominent people.

So, he questions, what about the less celebrated people who have been left out yet they are valuable to our culture? In a mind-tickling, somewhat cheeky social media post, he asks who will tell his story, which attracts a spectrum of reactions.

The question in retrospect always comes up when the artist gets to artistically tell stories of history, of people he has had the privilege to paint while in their humble homes, and whose stories would not have made it to the headlines of mainstream media.

Celebrated elsewhere

As Kenya celebrated 50 years of independence, the Ugandan-born artist was recognised for preservation of the country’s heritage. In an interview with this newspaper, Lydia Galavu, curator of National Museums of Kenya at the time said Kenya was proud and blessed to have Leonard Kateete whose art has, over the years, become part of the country’s heritage.

“Most significant are his oil paintings of African communities, 24 of which hang at the National Museums of Kenya,” Galavu added.

Uniqueness

From a tender age, Romana Brenda Nabbosa observed her father’s art.

She finds his uniqueness in the power of observation.

She explains, “If you have had the opportunity to look at his life-sized portraits of various tribes in Kenya, you will appreciate the detail and care taken to capture his subjects’ eyes. It is from him that I learnt that the eyes carry the most emotion. So even if the rest of the portrait has subtle elements of the subjects’ clothes and environment, the detail must be sharpest in the eyes.”

Born on March 23, 1951, Kateete describes himself as an ordinary simple African artist hacking out a living solely through art. In Primary Four, his kindergarten teacher, Lucy Kayiwa saw him scribbling arty stuff in the book and encouraging him to keep drawing.

To his recollection, she was the first person who saw the artist in him.

He kept at it.

In Form Two, at Namilyango College School, in 1968, he participated in an art competition organised in Casablanca, Morocco and emerged a winner among students from secondary schools and colleges in Africa.

He was elated

At the time, he drew his inspiration and focus from established artists, Norbert Kaggwa and Mugalura Mukiibi. With the win, his courage was boosted so he began purposing his art, longing to look beyond mere realistic representation of his subjects but to portray the character or soul behind their faces.

Before painting a piece, he asked for God’s guidance. His spirituality was much alive and started evidently manifesting in most of his art works as he travelled and observed art and designs on monasteries.

When he was a little older and had started earning a living from art, he fulfilled his childhood dream of journeying to places where aspirational art was made and displayed.

He went to the Vatican, museums in Madrid, Barcelona at the Prado, Picasso Museum and Salvador Dali in Figalesi then Loyola and San Sebastian, Amsterdam, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, the Chinese National Museum in Beijing, South Africa’s museums and art galleries.

The commitment

Part of his commitment to carry on with art was sparked off at an annual event organised by the Catholic Church Copa Cristy, or the possession Sunday. The artistic patterns on the procession path in colourful chalk were an attractive and inspiring sighting for Kateete.

That was at Nkozi parish near his birthplace of Kayabwe. He went on to appreciate more art in the Catholic Church and interested himself in reading different literature about European artists, including writings about Leonardo Da Vinci.

From one painting to another, he kept getting better and recognised. As a student in 1972, he made a donation of a portrait to president , Idi Amin.

It was on initiation of Princess Elizabeth Bagaya who wanted to get young people a platform to shine. 18 years later, he painted one of Nelson Mandela’s most prominent portraits found at the Nelson Mandela National Museum located at house 8115, Orlando West, Soweto, on Vilakazi Street in Johannesburg.

The portrait mirrored a photograph of Madiba published in Time Magazine in February, 1990. At the time, Kateete was a teacher of art at Loreto Convent Msongari, a school in Nairobi where he had relocated from Uganda owing to the political unrest.

Earlier on in his teaching career, between 1978 and 1979, he taught Paul Kagame who later on became president of Rwanda. In a way, art has been both a profession and a source of solace too.

He says it is a fulfilment of his God given talent too.

“In most cases, it takes prayer. And this could be the reason why almost 70 percent of what I have done is religious art. I am saying so because I have done Hindu art on top of Christian art,” he attests.

Father Tony Fernandes from the Dominic Savio Retreat Centre, says that Kateete’s capacity to direct and guide young African talent to bring to life imaginative artistry is proof of his amazing talent and skill.

“Artists for me are ‘loners’ but Kateete is very social,” he adds.

Inspiring others

When Charles Kataka Aura met Kateete at the Nairobi National Museum of Kenya in 2012, he was in a programme called Nairobi National Museums Art Club (NANAMAC), a programme for young upcoming high school artists.

“In a session, we were introduced to his first paintings of the traditional tribal individuals of Kenya. These were in the exhibition in one of the museum’s galleries. Each of us was told to choose just one and replicate it. Around this time, I came across Kateete during one of his visits to the museum. I remembered watching a video playback on a TV set in the gallery, with him working on a glass mosaic,” Kataka says.

He had learned mosaic in high school but what he saw was uniquely different. He marvelled at seeing a skill and materials that were so strange to him. Kateete became more frequent and familiar with the club.

He once offered to train the whole club in portrait sketching. The session was good training. Kataka stayed for more than a year without joining college due to financial constraints as his single mother wasn’t able to afford his tertiary education.

“I remember Kateete walking inside one of the museum’s galleries and found me reading my Bible. He asked me and another club member to go and help him do a mosaic project and after that, assisted us in paying for our first semester in college. His generosity humbled me. He made it official by meeting the people directly involved in the club’s affairs, and they all agreed to the plan,” Kataka narrates.

He later graduated from the Multimedia University of Kenya.

“I have gained from his vast artistic knowledge and skill. He taught me glass mosaic, sketching and a bit of his unique way of painting, how to mount finished artwork professionally, sculpture, introduction to granite curving on top of learning generosity, humility, forgiveness, patience, and honesty as one carries out their professional activities. All these have transformed my life tremendously,” he adds.

Visual artist and art historian, Jude Kateete describes his cousin as a representational or figurative artist with a three-fold artistry: a painter, mosaicist and sculptor.

“As a painter, his forte has been manifested in the genre of portraiture, through which he says more to provide a sense of the depicted person’s presence, and the uniqueness of that person. As a mosaicist, his artistry has been manifested in the reliving the glory of the mosaic tradition which Early Christian and Byzantine art bequeathed to the world, and transposing it to his modern-day subjects,” he explains.

Documenting cultures

And from those he has painted, Kateete has made an impression so strong that they have chosen to support his efforts in artistic documentation.

Russell Leith is a subject and client who became a friend and funder after Kateete completed his portrait. While he sat in his sitting room and compound being painted, Leith understood how committed this artist was to present paintings that showed realistic feeling that the model has at the time and the detail he captures to make the paintings present what looks and feels real.

In order to promote his paintings, he spurred the idea of encouraging Kateete to set up the Kateete Pan-African Art Foundation, a not-for-profit trust under which he will share and sell his art to Africa and world.

“I consider that the history that he has captured through the community paintings he has completed needs to be shared. The funds received from the paintings and prints will be shared between Kateete and the trust. The trust will use the funds to develop other artists and the environment for art in the African region. In addition, the trust will offer education support for promising artists and Kateete will also offer free art training courses and generally promote art,” Leith discloses, adding that the trust has also given Kateete motivation to paint more than he has in the past couple of years.

He still has much talent and energy to continue to present paintings available to everyone. Part of that is rooted in his work ethic and adaptability through a broad approach to work, without limiting himself to a particular genre.

“He has also demonstrated adaptability to different cultural environments when he moved to live and work in Nairobi during the turbulent times of the 1980s.

“In terms of professionalism, I will single out his dedication, penetration and methodical effort which define him as an expert who works to the best of his ability,” says Jude Kateete, his brother.

Jude Kateete grew up in Kayabwe, in the rustic life of Lukonge Village community where fishing and farming was a way of life. Leonard Kateete was one of the few from the village to have graduated from Makerere University in the 1970s.

Nabbosa underscores his adaptability which continues to keep him relevant. Her earliest memory of her father’s practice involved the use of banana fibre as a material in collage art.

“Over the years, I have seen him grow into stained glass work, life-sized sculpture in fiberglass, marble and eventually stone. Although there have been times when things got tough, he never abandoned his craft. He found a new media to express it. My father always insists that a painting is never really finished. Everyone who looks at it adds a little bit more to it; whether in the form of an interpretation or their experience of it,” she says.

In conclusion, Nabbosa says her father has always been a source of inspiration.

“I thank you for teaching me to see artistic impressions everywhere I go. And to intentionally see the beauty that is to be found in everyone.”

What others says

I have gained from his vast artistic knowledge and skill. He taught me glass mosaic, sketching and a bit of his unique way of painting, how to mount finished artwork professionally, sculpture, introduction to granite curving on top of learning generosity, humility, forgiveness, patience, and honesty as one carries out their professional activities. All these have transformed my life tremendously. - Charles Kataka Aura, Kenyan artist.

Over the years, I have seen him grow into stained glass work, life-sized sculpture in fiberglass, marble and eventually stone. Although there have been times when things got tough, he never abandoned his craft. He found a new media to express it. - Romana Nabbosa, daughter.