Kateete’s painting depicts a water source in a quarry somewhere in Kilifi, near the Indian Ocean coast in Kenya. A child had fallen into the water and died, leaving the community in a quandary: to use the water or not to use it during a time of increasingly dry conditions. Kateete captures the trauma of the solitary woman in the picture who is defying orders not to fetch the water. But she seems to be reconsidering what she is about to do, cup in hand. Look at the way Kateete makes the barbed wire a major character in the painting, the sharp points looming large in the foreground and giving the picture its firm and defining force.
