RICHARD ONYANGO COMING TO NATIONAL MUSEUM OF KENYA FROM MARCH 13

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Richard Onyango at the gallery, A Tribute to Expedito Mwebe and More... Inbox x MuseumArt-Kenya via mail99.suw17.mcsv.net  Mar 1 (2 days ago) to me YOUR SPECIAL INVITATION ..... Email not displaying correctly? CLICK HERE   RICHARD ONYANGO OFFICIAL LAUNCH 13 MARCH 2016   13 March to 13 September 2016 Born in 1960, RICHARD ONYANGO – one of Kenya’s most prominent artists - is younger than the other pioneer artists whose works have been shown at the Nairobi Gallery.  However, Onyango is noted for his “retrospective works”, ie painting scenes from  Mombasa Old Town as he imagines it was in l963 or the bus that took him to school in 1968.  In fact, Onyango has had a fascination for buses and the brave new world of  machines and vehicles of all kinds ever since he moved  with his mechanic father from the Western highlands near Lake Victoria to the developing coastal region of Malindi. Using trash and scraps collected by street children, he even creates  replicas of ferries, tractors and lifesized airplanes.  Onyango confesses he always wanted to be a pilot, and the photo above shows him in the cockpit of one of his artistic creations.  As a young man in dusty cowboy boots,  Onyango  had many careers including driving, farming, carpentry, fashion designer, wood carver, sign painter, jazz musician  and animal trainer, before he started painting  at the age of twenty encouraged by some of the Italian supporters of the arts  at Malindi and a local businessman and art collector, named Feisal Osman. Having studied painting at the age of 16 he developed a vocabulary of  “photo pictures” in his mind  to which he still refers in his recent paintings. Later, as a young artist he  met his European girl friend, a voluptuous Italian girl named Drosie and produced his most famous series of works on their brief love affair, which are like snapshots, or a slice of life during his more flamboyant days.  Onyango has a remarkable following from abroad. He had his first exhibition in the West in l992  which had generally good reviews. His paintings have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2003, Africa Remix in 2005, in galleries and museums in the USA and UK, and in the contemporary African art collection (CAAC) In Geneva.  He still continues to live in Malindi.