JETHWA B

International artist · Nairobi, Kenya

MURALS AND STUDIO PAINTING.

I paint murals and I work in the studio. Large walls in public, and smaller work indoors — the same hand at two different scales.

Nairobi, Kenya. Commissions and studio enquiries welcome.

Work

Two bodies of work, one practice: walls at architectural scale, and paintings made in the studio. The photographs below are stand-ins until I add my own.

Large abstract mural covering the side of a city building

Murals · Public walls

Walls

Large-scale painting on exterior surfaces — buildings, underpasses, boundary walls, interiors that want to read as one continuous surface. Scale is the point: a wall is looked at from across a road, from a moving car, from a window above it.

Artist working at an easel in a studio surrounded by paint and brushes

Studio · Painting

Studio

Painting made indoors, at the scale of a body rather than a building. This is where the marks get worked out before they ever go up on a wall, and where the work that stays off walls gets made.

Commissions

Commissioned work

Walls made to a brief — for a building, a business, a school, a public space. I work directly with whoever owns the wall, from first site visit to final coat.

Close detail of a painted surface showing layered colour and brush marks

Process · Detail

Surface

The part that only survives up close: how the paint sits on the wall, where the layers show through, what the texture does in raking light. Photographs of finished walls rarely carry this.

Across borders

International

I work internationally and travel for projects. Walls painted outside Kenya, and studio work shown or sold to people in other countries.

Paint cans, brushes and colour swatches laid out on a studio floor

Materials

Paint, pigment, ground

What a piece is made of depends on where it has to live — exterior walls and interior paintings don't want the same materials. I choose per project and I'll tell you what I'm using and why.

Photographs on this page are placeholders. Send me your own images and I'll swap them in.

Studio

I'm an artist working in two modes. Outdoors I paint murals — large, public, on walls that already belong to somebody and to a street. Indoors I work in the studio, on painting that doesn't have to answer to a wall or a client.

The two feed each other. Studio work is where a mark gets tested at a size I can see all at once; mural work is where that mark has to survive weather, distance and an audience that never asked for it.

I'm based in Nairobi, Kenya, and I work internationally — travelling for walls and for projects that take me out of the studio.

How I work

  1. 01

    The wall

    It starts with the surface — where it is, what it's made of, who sees it and from how far. A wall that's read from a moving car wants something different from one people stand next to every day.

  2. 02

    Drawing

    The composition gets worked out before any paint is mixed — on paper, at a size I can hold. Nothing goes onto a wall that hasn't been resolved smaller first.

  3. 03

    Prep

    Cleaning, patching, priming. The unglamorous part, and the part that decides whether the painting is still there in five years. I'd rather spend the days here than repaint later.

  4. 04

    Painting

    On site, in daylight, for as long as the wall and the weather allow. Large walls take days to weeks; the studio pieces take as long as they take.

  5. 05

    After

    Sealing and finishing so the work holds up outdoors, and a record of the finished piece — photographs taken properly, not on a phone in bad light.

Now

What I'm working on

On walls

Painting murals — commissioned and self-initiated — in Nairobi and further afield.

In the studio

Making painting in the studio alongside the mural work, at a smaller scale and a slower pace.

Open

Taking on mural commissions and studio enquiries. If you have a wall in mind, tell me about it.

Contact

Tell me about the wall — where it is, roughly how big, and what it's for. Or write about studio work, exhibitions, or anything else.

Messages sent through this form come straight to my inbox. I'll reply to you directly.