By Ogova Ondego
Published March 4, 2021
The last time ArtMatters.Info covered artist Annabelle Wanjiku Reeno (February 4, 1962 – January 7, 2021)’s work was in March 2017. Then, her month-long show, titled Annabelle’s world of colour, was running at Nairobi National Museum.
Born Annabelle Wanjiku in Nyeri on the slopes of Mount Kenya, the woman who died in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, in January 2021, had come full circle, having been a sexually-abused child, teenage street mother, drug-doing prostitute, domestic servant, ‘kept woman’, singer, beach front property-owner, artist and preacher as per her own testimony.
I first met Annabelle through Hawafrica Women Artists, a Nairobi-based group that helps in sharpening artistic skills among women for economic independence, almost 20 years ago. She came across as a struggling artist who nevertheless appeared to be passionate about environmental conservation, traditional African cultural values and the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Wanjiku, on whose shoulders premature motherhood was forced by a relative at the age of 15, says the rejection and hardship she experienced had not only shaped her worldview but was also an influential force in the way she lived and practiced art. She even created her own painting colours from readily available material like charcoal, ash and mud, she said.
Saying she made her name on the Kenyan art scene in the mid 1980s through an art gallery owner, collector and promoter called Ruth Schaffner who died in 1996, Annabelle Wanjiku Reeno explained that the dominant themes in her paintings were peace, love, unity, family, community and strength.
The strength of any nation, she stressed, comes from how families are nurtured.
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“Her homegrown, impasto technique of laying paint on canvas, involves mixing and creating her own paints using clay and natural pigments alongside traditional artist paint,” artauctioneastafrica.com describes the fallen artist’s work. “Her work has featured in group and solo exhibitions since the early 1980s in Kenya, Uganda, Germany, the USA and Japan.”
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Perhaps no one tells Annabelle Wanjiku Reeno’s story better than Margaretta wa Gacheru, Nairobi’s legendary writer who specializes in visual arts.
Wa Gacheru, whose real name is Margaretta H Swigert and who now holds a doctoral degree from Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois, USA, writes that Annabelle Wanjiku started painting in her early 20s ‘after her musical talents were discovered while she was still working on Koinange Street’ and she had been ‘ signed with the [Joseph] Kamaru’s All-Stars’ band.
While performing with Ziken Band at ‘New Chiromo Hotel’, wa Gacheru writes ion the Business Daily of Nairobi, Wanjiku ‘met a German artist who whisked her away to Diani Beach where they lived for the next few years’.
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Gunter Godor, her partner, wa Gacheru writes, ‘helped her build her African Flames band, bringing back musical equipment after he had flown to Germany’.
The man, according to the departed artist’s testimony on Hope TV of Nairobi, bought eight acres of beach land in her .
“The situation only got messy after I became a Christian and he said he wouldn’t share me with another man, meaning Jesus Christ,” Annabelle told wa Gacheru, a statement she repeats in the Testify programme on Hope TV.
She chose Christ and lost the man who’d given her the choice between clinging to Jesus and losing him or keeping him and renouncing Jesus Christ.
Using the court system, Gunter Godor, wa Gacheru writes, wrenched the property from Annabelle Wanjiku who had chosen not to counter-sue.
“In the end, Annabelle simply settled, leaving him with practically everything except her paints, brushes and the clothes that she could pack,” writes wa Gacheru.
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“Annabelle Wanjiku … was widely known for her impasto technique and shades of pain that she would create using clay and natural pigments. Not only was she a talented visual artist, but her multiple talents saw her establish herself as a gospel music artist. It was her spiritual calling which led her to ministry and doctoral studies in Divinity. She and her husband settled in Uganda 12 years ago, and despite a busy schedule in ministry, Annabelle continued to practice her art,” The GoDown Arts Centre says in its message of condolences to the family and friends of the artist.
Thus saying, the lights have dimmed, the curtain come down and darkness fallen on the colourfully colourful world created for humanity by Annabelle Wanjiku Reeno.
