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The central orange cross-figure standing alone, arms spread, fork-like hands and feet, a small green clover or moth resting right at its chest starts to look like a body marked by both loss and continued giving: upright and exposed at the very centre of the canvas, holding a small living thing (the clover/moth) close to where a heart or breast would be.
Everyone else in the painting - the green-and-blue paired heads nuzzling at left, the bird-woman shape at right with her key trailing off the edge, the tangled red-green mass of fish and roots below - carries on around her, separate, coupled, or growing, in a way she isn't.
The key hanging off the right edge on its own long blue cord reads like something left behind or unlocked and never reclaimed. The bicycle and treble clef at bottom left, ordinary and domestic, sit at a distance from her, as if daily life continues elsewhere while she remains fixed at the painting's dead center - present, sustaining, but alone.
Born in 1974 in Mumias, western Kenya, Erick Sande trained as a graphic designer at The Kenya Polytechnic before turning to painting, exhibiting early work at the Kenya National Museum Gallery. A 1995 meeting with Ruth Schaffner, founder of Gallery Watatu, launched his career in Nairobi’s art community. His early work drew on Abaluyia tradition and myth; it has since broadened toward multiculturalism, patriotism, and the athleticism of Kenyans as a unifying national force. Working across media in a style of continual fusion & experimentation, Sande has exhibited solo and in groups at multiple venues. His illustrations appear in the poetry collection Makonde by Joan Sikand. He lives & works in Nairobi.
