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| "Palombe" oil on canvas 46 x 35.5 cm |
Palombe was the first person I met, when I arrived in Ruarwe, Malawi, East Central Africa, on my first visit in
January 2006. I soon learned that he was “Head Man” of the Village, and lived in
a small, mud-brick, grass roofed house on the beach. I photographed and drew him on a number of
occasions, and once again his portrait was the
first one I made in Ruarwe.
He seemed not only to embody the Village,
but the land and animals that once roamed there.
From our first meeting he struck me as a man of an ancient type of nobility
that knows how to bare hardship with dignity.
Palombe was the first subject from
Ruarwe that I developed into a painting, because it offered the
possibility of making a portrait that represented something of what I had
discovered in my travels and reading about Africa.
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