We first encountered this prolific painter while she created art to the sound of Ras Sheehama singing liberation songs.
He was performing live at the Kavango River for his yet to be released episode of Ngandu TV’s Rock the Boat.
She stood alongside his band and painted what she felt and what she heard. It turned out beautifully, telling a million stories all at once.
Shamoullah ‘Shilley’ /Howoses is the 24-year-old visual artist from Khorixas that we are talking about. Her career began three years ago, and she now does it full time, doing regular live art sessions at Cramer’s Ice Cream in the Windhoek CBD.
“I practise abstract art and neo-expressionism using my fingers mostly to paint, my hand is quite shaky so the brushes can be a bit difficult to use sometimes,” she explains.
Neo-expressionism is an art style from the late modernist or early postmodern painting and sculpture era in the late 1970s.
Artists describe this style as having intense subjectivity and employing a rough handling of painting materials.
/Howoses’ work is made up of some very dark and sometimes conceptual pieces of art. She employs a lot of deep and warm colours like red and brown and black, with striking and intense imagery splattered across the canvas.
This is the type of work that draws you in.“I used to love drawing the heart and flowers. I have an attachment to them for some personal reasons,” she recalls, “But I love to draw random faces that come up in my head, and throwing paint on canvas is my favorite thing to do.”
/Howoses says she is inspired by a multitude of things, like her two-year-old son or simply how she feels at any given moment. She adds that music and the ambience also affect what might flow from her fingers.
“I never plan ahead, that’s why my work never repeats itself, even when I try,” she adds.
The painter, who designed all of her own tattoos herself as well, has dreams of showing her work off on an international stage.
“It would be lovely to represent black African women artists in big galleries around the world. It’s something I look forward to experiencing as an artist,” she says, adding that she aspires to touch as many hearts as possible with her work, since everyone interprets it in their own way.
She has come into the art scene at the right time, as a shift seems to be occurring. For a long time there was a huge thirst in the city for gallery exhibitions and showcases. This has dwindled a little but not disappeared completely.
At the present, the visual art market in Namibia is burgeoning and many creatives are able to make a name for themselves, though it is a small field with limited resources and opportunities. /Howoses feels that more can definitely be done for herself and fellow artists.
“Our art industry is a neglected one. I don’t want to put it that way, but it’s a little bit more of a self-employment industry and I think it could be better,” /Howoses says when asked what she would change or improve about the sector she has worked in since 2019.
“What we need is some legal representation for our artists and wage certification that sets minimum standards of compensation for us,” she adds.
The artist charges for her work depending on the size of the painting and the time it takes to make. For more of her work, check her out online at @shamoullah_creating.
– Anne Hambuda is a poet, writer, social commentator and media personality. Email her at annehambuda@gmail.com for more.
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