Clinton returns to Kenya to teach art to young people

Clinton initially travelled to Kenya in last May as a volunteer to work in the KCC children’s school and with HIV/Aids awareness with MYAA (Malewa Youth Aids Awareness).

However, after the young people in the slum heard that Clinton was an artist, it began an interest and intrigue into his profession back in Northern Ireland.

The young Kenyans asked whether they could be taught how to draw and Clinton began to teach two different groups of youths, aged 17-22, the fundamental practices of drawing.

Speaking about his return to Kenya, Clinton said: “I knew in that time I was just sratching the surface of all that I wanted to do there. This time it will be purely about me working with art.

“I hope to work with some of the people I worked with before and I would also like to establish links with other artists and hold exhibitions before I leave.”

Clinton’s own career has gone from strength to strength in recent times. The week before arriving back to Northern Ireland from his previous trip to Kenya he received an email confirming a solo exhibition in the Waterfront Hall for March 2012.

Once back home, Clinton started creating a new body of painting, as well as deciding to become self-employed as a full time artist. He also had the biggest, most successful exhibition of his career, to date, in 150 feet of space in the Waterfront Hall earlier this year.

After coming home from Kenya, Clinton learnt that the young people he had taught there had set up their own studio, calling it ‘Clinto’s new studio for drawing and painting’. They have continued to draw, with the local artist describing their work as “fascinating and brilliant”, and Clinton included some of it in his last exhibition catalogue.

His trip to Kenya in October will see him spend eight weeks in the country, where he intends to develop the work he started, as well as to try and pinpoint what happened to him as an artist and why his work began to make so much more sense after the time in Kenya last year.

Clinton’s work has been greatly influenced by his time in Africa, the people and the different landscapes, and this is something he hopes to explore further.

“The landscape filtered into my work,” he said. “It’s a very dry landscape, obviously the higher you go the land is green, but the plains are almost desert like, with solitary trees or sheep seemingly wandering about aimlessly. You’ll see dust storms in the distance, it’s very different from here, but equally as beautiful in my eyes.”

Clinton will be creating a new body of work after returning from Kenya, having recently confirmed a new space for showing in 2013 which will be entirely based on his experience and what he learns from this trip.

“It’s going to be interesting going back,” he concluded.

[email protected]