Portia Zvavahera gives new meaning to abstract art

should be held in high esteem.
As one of the current crop of painters, she takes pieces of cloth left over from the trousers, sticks from the backyard and impedimenta from the kitchen, frame it all with bamboo and put it on a wall. We have, therefore, moved into a different era of painting in Zimbabwe, one in which paint is not so important, one in which, like any other field of endeavour today in the country, we make do with what we have.
Zvavahera’s abstract painting allows what is inside her to rise to the surface, what she feels to be revealed. Her abstract painting is also about her use of paint, about giving paint its reign, allowing paint to be part of the process of painting, to almost have its own ideas about what it wants to do and where it wants to go.
Abstract painting strips naked a person of orthodox ideas about painting, it is about “stage effect”, it is about theatre, it is about, in a sense, performance. For the abstract painter, the world boils down to the painter and the paint, no more, no less.
Zvavahera has managed to forgo the brush and the sponge, she allows the paint to establish its own direction, colours to merge with other colours and create new colours. Her use of colour and technique puts her firmly into position of one of the front runners in a treacherous marathon of reviving genuine painting rather than to search the kitchen cupboard for what to hang on the walls or crank up ancient welders to put together their scrap metal. Zvavahera has successfully emerged as one of Zimbabwe’s budding female fine art practitioners whose positive outlook on life has been commendable in the current development of visual arts in the country.
Her work is inspired by her dreams and strongly believes that people see their future through their dreams.
Her solo show at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Harare themed “Under My Skin” was the brainchild of one her dreams and she powerfully illustrates these through her painting and printing.
The exhibition ran concurrently with a complementary show of mostly mixed media work by seven other dynamic young artists who are said to be standing in as revolutionaries whose aim is to give the face of art a new meaning. Her print work titled “Walking Away”, that was inspired by a horrific dream but could only remember seeing a figure walking away cements the continual significance of spiritual art that engraved Zimbabwe on the modern art world map.
Most of her dreams are linked to our traditional beliefs that today are widely regarded as superstition. Dreaming of a dog is considered as either a sign of protection or danger. This is illustrated in a print work titled “Kuchengetwa/Kurwiswa” that demonstrates a vision of a dog. As a result, her works are a product of what stems from under her skin. The milestone exhibition showed print works that also interpret attitudes of happiness, sorrow, love or hate.
It’s high time artists take painting seriously and secure the country’s position on the world art map, as happened with stone sculpture, and be recorded by history. What is needed “out there” is the real thing, the paintings themselves.