‘My focus in painting has been to understand my grammar. I believe I have created an alphabet that has helped me paint and speak my truth.’ This is how Zimbabwean painter Misheck Masamvu describes the process of painting. The paintings are both a reflection of Masamvu’s personal circumstances as an artist living and working in Zimbabwe and an exploration into the formal construction of painting and colour. Contradiction and conflict serve as undercurrents in the works; distorted figures transmute out of raging landscapes.

While violent motion is depicted in the brush strokes and paint-work, there is a sense of immovability – as if the figures are trapped within torrents of painted land, caught within their own past and their own circumstance. For Masamvu, taking ownership of the landscape (perhaps, like the political act of taking ownership of the land) is a multidimensional act of personal and group consciousness.