Maybe some of you readers are already vaxxed, waxed, unmasked, and ready to smash those openings, but at the time of writing, I’m still living in a never-ending online viewing room (trigger!). Fortunately, there is some really good painting out there, and I’m growing into the frustration of not being able to see it in real. It’s like food-porn; or porn-porn.
That’s a solid introduction for today’s Passion Painting, Godwin Champs Namuyimba. Solid? Hm-hm. Solid blacks, solid greys, solid blues, looking like they’re painted on cardboard. But also liquids. In the whites and yellows, spread like almond butter over the underlayers, like it’s a punk version of the Venetian glazing method. Have you seen these beautiful physical contrasts?
The composition, solid, with clear divisions of the pictural space. Liquid, the use of the space, with floating perspectives supported by strong tiles and patterns work. Escape with a beer is my favourite painting out of this selection. I hope you take the time to appreciate the beautiful colour changes of the lines of the body, the subtle colour composition (stand up and go to the back of your tiny ass room to see what I mean) and of course the details in the jacket and the beer bottle that are simply lovely. Godwin Champs Namuyimba was kind enough to answer our Passion Painting questions:
How do you start your day?
I wake up and I take my special coffee which is always weak. Some people have compared it to brown water, but that is how I like it. I then go to the studio and start working.
If you were to paint one thing over and over what would it be?
I would paint my mother. Painting is a constant investigation of what one’s hand can do when it is connected to the recesses of the mind that do not put limits on anything. If I paint I am free.
Do you like exhibiting your work? What do you do on the openings?
Artists should give birth to orphans. I am not sentimental. The varnishing process is that final ritual before the painting is sent away to live its’ own life. I like people to go to my openings if it makes them happy. I am happier in the studio.
What is your favourite place to think about a new painting?
My paintings are already finished in my mind before I make them, so my favourite place to think about them is everywhere.
What is your relation to past painters, and the history of art?
My relation to art history and past painters is that art history happened and past painters did what they did and they did it for themselves, not for me. I paint for myself and if that somehow finds its way into art history someday, then it might be useful for those who write it.
Which question would you like to ask your painting Idol?
Please, can you hand me the 1/4” brush over there?
How did you develop this work you’re doing now?
I try to approach the subjects from a point of empathy when they enter my consciousness as fleeting characters or as vacant blanks. I am interested in what happens when the subject is transformed into the content.
How did you meet your favourite collector?
Real collectors are brave people who follow a vision, much in the same way as an artist does. I have met mostly cowards so far in terms of collectors. Ask me again in 30 years.
Why do we still paint in 2021?
Because love never ends.
Where is Painting heading?
I think it is good to know why painting keeps on dying and why painting keeps on coming back as well. It is a healthy living corpse.
Can you tell me 3 colleagues whose work you admire?
I admire individual works and it changes every day. No artist has an entire body of practice that can be admired, not even my own.
