PATIENCE MUSA
He sold American singer, Chris Brown, a painting, designed his song Go Crazy cover.
He was invited to Brown’s home and painted it too.
The artist’s condolence artwork for DMX titled We will meet again, graced a billboard in Times Square, a major commercial intersection, tourist destination and entertainment centre in New York City, United States of America.
This could pass as perhaps Zimbabwe’s most expensive digital artwork in recent times.
He also had his artwork posted by Drake on his Instagram page.
Nyasha Warambwa, popularly known as @huliodraws on social media, has broken new ground, becoming the only Zimbabwean artist to have done that.
Having been interested in art as a young boy, the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown got him delving more into it and into digital art specifically.
While most of Zimbabweans were moaning, groaning, and complaining about being stuck at home, the artist decided he would make more than just lemonade.
The brilliance of the artist lies in the hip hop stories his pieces tell and the pride he has in who he is and where he is from. In every art piece be sure to find the Zimbabwean flag hidden in there somewhere.
One day, many decades and centuries to come I know his pieces will inspire scores of conspiracy theories and mystery stories.
Scholars and students will wonder what he was thinking and investigate what was happening at that time in the world of hip-hop.
Imaginations will run wild about hidden messages, symbols and even that Zimbabwean flag will lead to all sorts of bizarre conclusions.
He is not the first artist to hide ‘things’ in art pieces.
Jan Van Eyck, a fifteenth century artist, snuck himself into a painting called Arnolfini Portrait.
A portrait of Bacchus by Caravaggio also hides a miniature self-portrait in the form of a reflection on the surface of the wine in a wine jug within the painting.
Born in a family of five children, Warambwa is the only artistic one and he has been proving to everyone who didn’t believe in him and those that have been cheering him on from the beginning, that this is just the beginning: one art piece at a time.
Warambwa is a reminder to parents that you do not need to understand or be crazy about everything that your children are passionate about.
As parents it’s important to remember how you were when you were young- the music you listened to, the clothes you wore, even the hairstyles you rocked.
Matthew Jacobson says it best – “Behind every young child who believes in him/herself is a parent who believed first”. Let us tap into the things that our children love and help and support them to find ways of earning from them.
One thing is for sure, Nyasha Warambwa is the kind of Zimbabwean we should all be following and retweeting. His story is the kind we should want our children to read about so that they may know that they too can-do great things in their own way.
