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Stephen Garan’anga Visual Art
For a century Emerald Hill Children’s Home has avidly been caring for some of this country’s children with hearing disability.
They have seen off generations of political and economic uncertainties and are still soldiering on with financial assistance from various quarters.
Verandah Gallery in Emerald Hill low density suburb of Harare, Zimbabwean artists and passionate art collectors have for twenty three years been part of the Home’s annual financial supporters.

Recently the Gallery conducted the 23rd edition of its annual charitable art exhibition with numerous artists at various levels on board. The worthy cause show sees 25 percent of all the sales of the single day show being forwarded to the Emerald Hill Children’s Home and Emerald Hill School for the Deaf.

The exhibition dominated by small sized paintings on card and very few graphics had several practitioners who rarely or do not participate in mainstream art exhibitions with locally established galleries and a handful of the established ones. Strangely more than 95 percent of the participating local artists were not present at the house garden show.

The artworks displayed on screens and a few on isles were quite interesting considering that a significant number had different styles on various subject matter never seen in mainstream exhibitions.

More significant was the display of artworks by kids of the Children’s Home. This is very encouraging as the aspiring young artists will be grown being conscious of art being an expressional form and a livelihood career.

Significant art sales were realised presumably because of the significance of the art exhibition but the pinch of the current lengthy economic stress is still deeply engraved.

The pricing of the artworks was still in the groceries’ category ranging from as little as $60 to $500.
However, this still gave sigh of relief to many artists who had several small works sold as they are able to plug in one or two of the several holes in their social responsibilities.

It’s now hard to establish whether majority of practitioners are producing low end art that converge with the depressed market or it’s the local market that is now used to dictating unceremoniously low prices.

Some of the participants of the charity show included well establish senior artist Arthur Azevedo who had his ever popular linear ink drawings of both domesticated and wild animals which included African elephants and rhinoceroses, warthogs and goats.

For the first time WallenMapondera showed figurative linear string graphics as opposed to his renowned animal presentations. Anthony Bumhira had a dose of small fluid figurative paintings with immaculate lines and clean colour.

David Chinyama probably had the largest of the exhibition’s paintings on canvas which were texturized bluish abstracts. He is one of the most serious artists who never compromise the quality of their artworks just like Barry Lungu who had multi figurative daily sceneries on canvas, Percy Manyongawho too had small powerful expressional abstract paintings on canvas, Peter Kwangware who had multi figurative acrylics on card and many more.

With the limited open group art exhibitions in the country, more artists cannot wait to enrol for the 24th edition of the charitable show.