Thursday 23 October 2014

Sondeka 2014: Story behind the paintings

Sondeka 2014 Creations
Team: Gemini Vaghela, Onyis Martin, Natasha Joshi
Brief: Create a piece showing cultural diversity and fusion in Kenya/Africa in the future

1.     Culture Shock – This creation aims to unify the people through colors and textures. The design highlights the creation of one people. The dots in the background slowly coming together to form the one people. The images of the people are very abstract and no distinctive form to show the unity of one people.  

The color scheme used in the creation of this artwork is specifically chosen to represent every culture there could be. The multicolored color scheme covers all our differences to bring us all together.

The highlight of creating this piece was that every willing person passing by our tent had a hand in adding some of the background dots. From age 8 onwards, we had a wide range of art lovers trying their hand at dotting our creation.


2    Bridging Cultures – This piece is a much simpler version showing how diverse we are and how we are trying to bridge the gaps. The landscape represents culture from different areas being “bridged” by the bridge across the river. The message here is “cross the river to our side”. The sun popping out of the shadows signifying a new dawn. The flow of the river representing the move from dark to light.

The color scheme here is also very colorful and bright to represent colors of every culture which finally merge to form a beautiful rainbow effect.


The highlight of this piece was working with water as the base to merge colors.

The photo: Natasha Joshi (left), Gemini Vaghela (middle), Onyis Martin (right)
The paintings: Bridging Cultures (left), Culture Shock (right)

Tuesday 21 October 2014

Sondeka 2014: artwork, challenges, memories

2 days of creativity, the most interesting of challenges I've faced in art! 

Teamwork at its best! As my team mate Onyis Martin says it best "in times of crisis,most people build walls and spread hatred.... Our team focused on spreading love and building bridges,long live Sondeka,long live Kenya" 

Creating our 2 pieces was a unique experience where we not only work with a team, but also have to follow a brief. Interestingly our ideas and styles matched our brief very well. 

The brief: create a piece showing cultural diversity and fusion in Kenya/Africa in the future

My best memory of sondeka 2014 will always be the excitement of doing what we love doing with a team infront of an audience. Getting the audience involved in our work and another way we showed how we could achieve the brief in fusing our differences. 

Coming up..the story behind our 2 pieces for the auction..

Friday 17 October 2014

Creating preps

With the theme "the future" what do you create? Unlimited possibilities! Narrowing it down to a positive outlook still gives way too many ideas to choose from..

My team finally decided on a unique creation with an experimental technique which is a combination of all our individual styles. The questions now are: will we complete the task in the given time? Or will we be too quick? Will our team fall in trying to combine our personalities or will we emerge sharing a stronger bond?

As we prepare to spend over 20 hours over 2 days doing nothing but work on our creation..we can't help but wonder..will YOU be there to support us? 

Monday 7pm the auction begins..will YOU bid on our creating to support Starehe girls?

Our team awaits your presence...

Ngong racecourse 19th and 20th October 9am-7pm each day...

Monday 6 October 2014

My team at sondeka


Less than 2 weeks to go to the much awaited sondeka festival!

My team met up last saturday to finalize our creation. After much debate and pondering we finally have our sketch ready for creation! I must say its shaping up to be an interesting vision of "the future" which is the theme for #sondeka 2014.

As the promos for this event begin keep a watch out for intro on my team which includes myself, Onyis Martin and Natasha Joshi. We are a diverse mix of visual artists with different techniques. We look forward to putting together our individual talents to create an outstanding piece.

A quick note from my team: Please do come down to ngong racecourse 19th and 20th October to cheer us on as we create our piece for the auction :)

Sunday 5 October 2014

Sondeka festival!

Sondeka festival 18-20th October at Ngong racecourse! Come see my team create a masterpiece for a charity auction. Proceeds from the sale go to Starehe Girls

My team will also have our unique art works for sale. Drop by and create an art piece of your own with us!

See the attached poster for more details..see YOU there!!!

Tuesday 16 September 2014

Sondeka Festival!

Save the Date!
Sondeka festival 18-20th october at ngong racecourse. 
Drop by and support my team while we create 1 art work which will be auctioned for charity :)




Monday 8 September 2014

Saturday 6 September 2014

Tv interview :)

If you are in Kenya see my feature interview this evening on the news bulletin on GBS channel :)


Wednesday 3 September 2014

...of trees and flowers...

Title: ...of trees and flowers...
Size: A4
©Gemini Art 2014


Artist Biography

Artist Biography

I have always been inclined towards art since a very young age, trying different forms of art including sketches and watercolours. It gives me the freedom to express myself without using words.

With abstracts I can define my understanding of a situation the way I perceive it, which is not necessarily in its original form. Semi-abstract landscapes give me a sense of how vast the world around us can be within the space of my canvas. I like experimenting with colours and textures which again adds to the abstract nature of my paintings.

The aim of my work is to draw in the viewers to find the deeper meaning under the work creating an emotional response which will keep them thinking about each piece long after they have moved on. My work brings on about a new imagination from the viewers which they perhaps didn’t know existed.

The importance of the world around us motivates me to bring out the vitality of the earth. Without the earth our survival is not possible and yet we abuse the natural resources we have instead of trying our best to conserve them. To maintain our livelihood and sustain the future, we have to appreciate and preserve what we have in nature. Without realising what we have in the first place, we will not be motivated to do anything to preserve our world.

I joined the Blender Art Gallery in Perth, Western Australia where I was living for about 10 years and I participated in their annual exhibitions held for residents. Since my move to Nairobi, I have had several exhibitions including The Nairobi National Museum, Banana Hill Art gallery, Mediterraneo Restaurant, the Village Market and Kuona Trust. I have had extensive media coverage of the exhibitions I have participated in as well curated including interview by GBS and KTN television channels.

My degree in Interactive Multimedia Technologies and Diploma in Photography made me appreciate the unique quality of hand painting in relation to media prints.