Chri-8arts
Landscapes catalogue and print sale
BIOGRAPHY
Chrispus Nyaanga (b. 2001) is a Nairobi-based visual artist whose practice investigates the intersections of place, memory, and perception. In an increasingly fragmented world, he attempts to distill life's complexities into visual narratives that are both intimate and universally resonant. Central to his inquiry is selfhood—how individual identity is shaped, contested, and affirmed by social, cultural, and environmental forces. For Nyaanga, connection is an active web of influences that must be untangled and reimagined through paint and paper.
Working primarily with acrylics and collage, he deploys a sharp, vibrant palette that pulses with urban energy. His densely layered surfaces incorporate found text, fragmented cut-outs, and handwritten phrases that mimic internal dialogues and unspoken city conversations. These textual interventions serve as psychological anchors, grounding abstract emotions in the tangible vernacular of street signs and personal notes. The resulting compositions feel like excavated memory boards—chaotic yet carefully orchestrated.
Nyaanga's solo exhibitions mark significant milestones: Breaking Expectations at Mombasa Art Gallery—a series on the resilience of Nairobi's hustlers—challenged conventional portraiture, while Home House Houses Home at Ardhi Gallery explored belonging and displacement within Kenyan urban contexts. Internationally, he has featured at the Russian State Museum of Contemporary African Art, Akka Project in Italy, Now Open Studio in the USA, and pop-up shows across Germany. His work has also appeared at the National Museums of Kenya and Banana Hill Art Gallery. An alumnus of the St. Andrew's Turi residency, Nyaanga continues to evolve as one of Kenya's most promising young contemporary artists, balancing formal experimentation with deeply personal storytelling.
A conversation on life,time and memory
This series began as remedy — painting these landscapes brought calm during a depressive episode, and quietly became a way back into researching the self.
Immersed in ecocentrism and Aldo Leopold's land ethics, I turned my gaze to Kenya's rural edges and Nairobi's outskirts, photographing the land as a living archive. These works read nature as a source of life, energy, healing, and geological time — a conversation older than any human voice.
I deliberately omit human activity, restoring an undefiled Africa — vibrant, colourful, whole. The viewer moves through the brushstrokes, asked to consider: as caretakers of this universe, have we honoured this conversation, or talked over it? The land remembers. The question is whether we still listen.
The forest does not miss us, this is how it looks when no one is watching. Light falling where it pleases. Without a single figure in sight the forest settles into its truest rhythm: quite, luminous and entirely complete in its own company
Where the canopy parts
100*70cm
Oils on canvas
$348
A photograph of an unfamiliar street is transformed into a painted love letter to arrival. Lush foliage lushes over quiet pavement, saturating the scene in deep greens of a new beginning. The quiet thrill of a place finally becoming yours
Verdant address
100*70cm
Oils on canvas
$348
The river slips through tatu city's deep forest—quiet, constant and unseen. Life moves with it ,root and branch, ripples catch the light. The river breathes
Silent artery of the woods
100*80cm
Oils on canvas
$387
An olive-green stillness. Two bare trees. A bushy path curling forward —like a dream the landscape is still having
Olive dream
40*80cm
Oils on canvas
$195
Short golden grass covers the semi-arid ground —dry, glowing and unapologetically yellow. Only heat, stillness and the quiet shimmer of earth meeting sun
Not green,but gold
40*80cm
Oils on canvas
$195
A morning breeze rolls through the grass swaying smooth and unhurried . Warm light catches each bend —gold against the chill, stillness in motion
Chill and gleam
40*70cm
Oils on canvas
$195
A small hill lifts gently—just high enough to watch. Planting clings to its back; thick brush gathers below. It says nothing it just sees
The silent rise
50*70cm
Oils on canvas
$195
Kisii unveiled itself in endless waves of green—tea farm terraces across rolling hills lush and alive. This was my first encounter: a landscape that didn't just exist but reached out and pulled me in
The green that welcomed me
120*70cm
Oils on canvas
$542
Tall trees strech towards the sky, while heavy timber rests on the vivid grass below. Bold flat and unapologetically green— a kisii landscape seen through David Hockney's lens
Timber and tall trees
120*70cm
Oils on canvas
$542
Canvas prints available—limited signed 5 editions prints
Medium size- $65
Large size- $95