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“Mazowe Barns” by Richard Witikani

Stephen Garan’anga Correspondent
Since the existence of time nature has proved to have the ultimate powers of earth unleashing destructive forces which default, carve, reshape, sweep and bathe the planet.

The unstoppable forces which have a purpose for the existence of all living organisms often toss man’s intelligence, leaving him humble and licking his wounds, forcing him to respect that he does not mastermind and remind him who in-charge is.

Nature rightfully positions mankind where he thrives best, masterminding his creativity but mindful of the ultimate powers of the earth, not trying to defy them.

Ultimately mankind is better-off appreciating and drawing inspiration from these wonders, exposing their beauty to his kind and encouraging their safeguarding as opposed to their current unimaginable volumes of destruction.

Zimbabwe as a speck of the earth has some of these beautiful natural wonders which Gallery Delta Foundation for Art and the Humanities is currently exposing to the world in its vicinity in “Terra III” exhibition of landscape paintings.

The show sponsored by the Germany Embassy in Zimbabwe and officially opened by Mr Ulrich Kloeckner, the Germany Ambassador to Zimbabwe features remarkable works by a select of twelve artists who were asked to create work that reveal man’s appreciation of nature.

Indeed they did just to the call depicting some of Zimbabwe’s less exposed beautiful scenery in their unique individual artistic ways. They drew their inspiration from the vast grasslands, the woodlands, the rock outcrops, the highlands, the waterways and the farms.

The creativity on display sometimes gives one an illusion that the massive destruction of wildlife habitat in search of firewood, expansion of human settlement, the excavation of pit and river sand, and the re-carving of the landscape extracting minerals will stop. But reality has it that mankind will not stop at anything trying to satisfy his needs. It only remains as a sincere wish that the environmental degradation will be minimised and leave areas in favourable conditions which will enable the regeneration of natural life.

The participants on show is a mixed bag of the young, the middle aged and very senior artists who include Helen Lieros, Kate Raath, Dayl Nero, Greg Shaw, Gilbert Jonasi, Webster Mubayirenyi, Munyaradzi Mugorosa, Cosmos Shiridzinomwa, Richard Witikani, Freddy Tauro, Mostaff Machaya and work by the late Henry Thompson and Robert Paul.

Webster Mubayirenyi has a magnificent portrayal of rampaging floods of Tokwe Mukosi battering the landscape in colourful ever-curving patches created by intermingling contour lines of the earth’s most precious liquid cascading down from a tilted treacherous terrain.

This serves as a typical example of how the earth forces can wreak havoc on the expansive human settlements whilst revitalising and re-carving its dwellings.

Greg Shaw a multi media artist renowned for his heavy striking mixed media has “The Sentinel” in cooperation of stripped hard cardboard box exposing its interior ripples smeared in various shades of brown earth, forming bricks of an aged security brick wall.

They are stuck up past the middle of two almost similar rectangular platforms like fairly small sized canvases. Above the brick-wall are six horizontal strips of rusty security razor wire against a distant background of again horizontal strips of dominant thicker dark blues and thinner shades creating a perfect horizon with the foreground brick-wall.

In-between the two portrait landscapes at equal distances apart is a formidable vertical termite engraved hardwood plank seemingly retrieved from the same earth to bisect the landscape but bearing the same brick-wall and razor-wire at same heights as the two pieces.

The plank extends about a twenty five centimetres below the baseline of either pieces exposing its once sunk darker underground brown earth colour. Just above the uppermost razor-wire line tied around it, the plank extends beyond the rectangular pieces to about forty five centimetres of its broken tip to conclude the masterpiece.

Richard Witikani has a multitude of amazing landscapes depicting mostly rural Zimbabwe and farms with such titles as “Domboremudzi”, “Murehwa”, “Dongoma Hill”, “Mazowe Barns”, “Nyaguwe”, “Riverside Farm” and “Ruzawi”.

Other works of the show include a two part series of “Acacia A” and “B”, “Zvingwere”, “Mana Inland I”, “Rain Tree”, and “Our Child”, all by Kate Raath; “Terra Firma” and “The River’ by Daryl Nero, ‘Goromonzi’ and ‘Domboshava View II” by Gilbert Jonasi, “Callidonia” and “Gwina Nzira”, “Nyazura” by Mostaff Muchawaya to highlight a few. The exhibition will be on until the end of June.