The first time I picked up a paint brush was on a Sunday afternoon about a month ago. I was in a room full of art such as paintings and potteryware and people who make these for fun and others who are professionals. It never occurred to me that I would come to love and appreciate painting as I do now. Painting was once one of those things which I didn’t understand why exactly people did them and especially how they made a living out it. At the time I was unsure what to do so I just decided to try and paint a picture of one of my favorite places in Dar es Salaam, Garden Avenue.
A few days later I decided to get some painting materials and try to paint myself. I got some brushes, mixing palettes, watercolor paper, a nice-looking glass jar and a set of 48 colors, which some people think is too much, but I prefer to escape the awful process of mixing hues to get the one I want.
Now that I’ve made a couple of paintings I’ve decided this is something I’m going to be doing for a long time. Making any kind of art, I understand now, is very enjoyable since one has the power to imagine and reimagine things in their own way, like how I reimagined Garden Avenue in my first painting. One person even commented that the painting looked like a dark road in the middle of a forest which is completely different from what Garden Avenue truly is because the place is surrounded by buildings in the middle of a very busy city. But they’re probably not wrong because from the way I see it the place doesn’t scream “city” and whenever I walked there it was like I was far from all the commotion Dar es Salaam is always glad to offer. It’s not a perfect work of art but the joy in doing all of it comes from being able to free whatever is in my mind and not let it be buried with me when my time comes. It was like I tasted some addictive drug for the first time (don’t do drugs).
So, the bottom line is that, since by now most of our new year resolutions have failed to materialize, it’s good to try something new that’s not part of a list made just after the date changed to December 1. It could be anything, even writing grammatically incorrect short stories based on whatever made up narratives you have in your mind. Let it all out of the cage!
Here are two of the paintings I’ve done so far with the help of this amazing channel Paint Academy:
the writing nib 