CHARINDA TAIL OF EIGHT Classic Tingatinga

He began as a student of MRUTA shortly after the death of ES Tingatinga. He continued to paint in the Tingatinga style for the next 46 years establishing the record for the longest career in that painting method.

In 1989 he was the first of the painters to begin to work on canvas as well as Masonite. This choice had a profound effect on the Tingatinga school freeing artists to work on larger paintings, to be able to package their paintings for a much more diverse market, and facilitated for many painters easy access to adding other styles of painting to the repertoires. Charinda himself was a large, happy and exuberant being. He began life as one of ten children who worked with their parents doing agricultural labor. He reported they always had enough to eat and sometimes enough to sell to others.

His paintings are owned around the world, photographed in books, presented in exhibitions of Tingatinga art on various continents, and in a few museums. His themes are broad reaching including history, the mythology of Makua people, social observations and vignettes from life around him as well as African wildlife. The TAIL OF EIGHT is of particular interest because the eye is captured by shaping of the bird and its feathers but the color comes from the background wash.