Patrick Seruwu

“At the end of the day we can endure much more than we think we can.” – Frida Kahlo

The Johannesburg-based, Ugandan-born self-taught artist, Patrick Seruwu, echoes Kahlo's sentiment by presenting his gratitude and respect for the impact women have played in his life journey thus far. Whether due to the influence of being raised by a single mother, or due to the nurturing presence of adopted mothers, sisters and aunts in his adopted country of South Africa, he continually finds himself amongst. The multitude of female narratives of strength and struggle, Seruwu collects from interactions with women sprinkled throughout Johannesburg get fed into his gestural canvas paintings. These depictions do not take the form of a typical portrait; this is to say, one will not find a portrait of a Sarah, Lerato, Thembisile or Nompumelelo, but instead the viewer is presented with an amalgamation of multiple stories and experiences, presented in human form, which take on a very expressive form.     

The combination of these interactions hibernate beneath the surface, and ultimately inform the direction of his paintings as he seeks to encapsulate the many facets of Afro-urban female existence. This he expresses through the variety of gestural brushstrokes in his arsenal. Dripping paint appears to communicate a sentiment beyond the aesthetic; the dripping application of paint appears to allude to a sense of weight thrust upon women. This, Seruwu uses to convey challenges and hardships experienced by modern day women living within the urban environment of an African city. Juxtaposed to this are the areas of levity, often indicated by paint splatter, which presents a lightness to the sections where they appear. It’s this combination of these and more painted application techniques which serve as a means to visually articulate the numerous complexities of the female experiences.