This vibrant painting was acquired directly from Adam Mwansa, an extraordinary painter and the finest draughtsman in all Zambia. Comfortable with charcoal, watercolor, oil, and acrylic paint, these days he executes his work at the intersection of representation and abstraction. This piece describes a market scene in that powerful style, effortlessly juxtaposing, shall we say, still life and human life. For the collector, the injection of yellow in the figure of the woman who seems distracted (in the center of the canvas) gives the painting its point of gravity. Mwansa, who is based in the remote Zambian town of Luanshya, trained as an art teacher at Lusaka’s Evelyn Hone College between 1984 and 1986. In 1993 he held a studio residency at the Wimbledon School of Art in London and, a year later, studied graphic design at The Hague in the Netherlands. This is one of two paintings by Mwansa now domiciled in the Roduza Collection.
