By Andrew Mulenga
From the tender age of 10, Luanshya-born painter
Raphael Chilufya’s restless imaginative spirit indicated that he was on a one
way path to become an outstanding artist. Creativity was his itch and art was
his scratch.
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| Swing (oil on canvas), by Raphael Chilufya |
“I could not control myself when I was a young boy, I
just had to draw with anything, on anything, the walls, the road, even in my
school books, from the time I had access to pencils,” he says.
But he began to take art seriously while in grade
four at Kansumbi Primary School except it was only two years later while in
grade six that all his friends yelled out his name when a call for entries to
an art competition was announced during assembly. He entered and eventually won
this competition and never looked back.
“But really it was when I went to Roan Antelope
Secondary School (RASS) which had a very strong art foundation that I was
inspired, because I was introduced to new techniques and materials,” he says
“When I finished school, I came to Lusaka immediately that was in 1985, my dad
was retired and my mother a bread winner passed away. I was given a job by Mrs
Musakanya and I had to manage her fleet of buses, but I wasn’t too happy.”
He was not happy because managing a transport
business meant waking up at ungodly hours to be on the ground with the fleet as
well as spending long hours at an accounts desk, managing figures; this meant
he had not time to practice his true vocation.
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| Own Market (oil on canvas) by Raphael Chilufya |
“I was glad to discover the Central African
Correspondence College from Zimbabwe which allowed me distance learning, so I
enrolled in a course and struggled to do art and work with buses as at the same
time. Then Evelyn Hone College launched a two year graphic design course and I
quit work and enrolled in 1992 because it demanded that I should be there full
time,” he says.
Upon graduation in 1995 he joined the industry and worked
for a string of printing houses and creative establishments among them Mojo Press,
Piltcher Graphics and Moore Pottery, during this period the newly formed Zambia
National Visual Arts Council (VAC) was in need of new members Chilufya got involved in mobilizing recruitments
through the Imiti Ikula (growing
trees) project for younger members alongside notable artists such as Geoffrey Phiri, current VAC vice-chairman Zenzele Chulu, and current chairman Mulenga Chafilwa as well as artist turned journalist
Ms Diana Mulilo.
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| Middle of Nowhere (oil on canvas) by Raphael Chilufya |
“Although I had a job, as the younger group at VAC,
we couldn’t afford or find materials so we were usually helped by the likes of Godfrey Setti, William Miko and also s Zukas helped us with
money because we used to sleep at the Henry Tayali gallery and vowed never to
shut its doors like a police station,” he recalls.
Eventually their beloved workspace at the gallery
was turned into a restaurant by new management and the Imiti
Ikula group also outgrew their alliance for independent careers in the
visual arts, some joining teaching practice, others choosing their own personal
space while Chilufya decided to head
south for inspiration. His venture took him to Mbabane, Swaziland where he successfully
held shows at Gallery.com and Indingilizi Art & Craft Gallery.
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| Left Behind (oil on canvas) |
He
moved on to South Africa where he was offered a contract with a
black empowerment corporation in Limpopo but could not stay long because it
demanded that he work for two years before he could come home to Zambia and
marry his fiancé and settle with her there. Chilufya retuned to Zambia from his foreign
adventures after 2002, settled down married his fiancé and returned to
practicing as an artist in Lusaka.
Describing himself as a “social environment
observer”, he remains one of the country’s finest figurative oil painters of
everyday life and his style can easily be identified by the hazy character of
his brush strokes and soft palette which could probably be described in fine
art terms as a cross between Scumbling
and Sfumato.
He has been widely collected both locally and
overseas, his works can be viewed or purchased from the Henry Tayali Gallery in
the Lusaka show grounds or Twaya Art Gallery at Intercontinental Lusaka.
(The
print version of this article was first published in the August 2014 edition of
Zambia’s Bulletin & Record
magazine under the title The wandering
artist as social environment observer).
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| Child (oil on canvas) by Raphael Chilfya |
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| Big Advice (oil on canvas) by Raphael Chilufya |
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| House Wife (oil on canvas) by Raphael Chilufya |
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