Artist Profile

Jak Katarikawe is East Africa’s most successful painter, yet he can barely read or write. Instead of letters, his language is art. For over forty years, the Ugandan-born artist’s brushes have poured muted colors onto canvas, where they curve into the animal and human figures that populate the tales he sees in his dreams. In the 1980s, many who came to Katarikawe’s studio compared his work to Chagall and Matisse. This was the first that Katarikawe had heard of these masters, and so he told his visitors “this Shagaal, this Maatisa, they saw my paintings and painted like me.” When Katarikawe learned that both artists had in fact died when he was just a young boy, Katarikawe was not fazed. Instead, he simply concluded: “We must [have] dream[ed] the same dreams, then.”

Artists Portfolio

Gallery Watatu Ltd
Standard Street, Lonrho House, Ground Floor
P.O. Box 41855
Nairobi, Kenya.
Tel: +254(0)738501838