Jonathan Ngonyama

Artistic background

My name is Jonathan Ngonyama, I was born and raised in Zimbabwe. Art was introduced to me at a young age, by my father was an accomplished artist, it was seeing his art and his nurturing of my own attempts of art at a young age, which caused art to always have a special place in my heart. Whilst in primary school, apart from drawing in pencil at home; we had art and craft sessions in school, where I mastered skills in basic soap stone sculpting, wood carving and clay moulding.

In 1999 I moved to the UK to study, due to having to focus on my studies, art fell into the background. Once my studies were complete, rekindled my love of art by attend several courses in painting and drawing to bolster my existing skills and grow as an artist.
Having lived in Africa, and the UK( I.e Berkshire, Devon, Somerset, Edinburgh , Newcastle upon Tyne, Nothumberland, Manchester Liverpool & Cheshire) has created a mixed and unique cultural background which I believe has influenced my work.
It was during these lessons that I learnt about abstract art. Something that revolutionised how I saw and understood what I could create, I had discovered that there is infinitely more to art than just painting reality. It was at this point that I started to experiment with utilising a wide range of materials in the creation of my artworks.

The majority of my artworks are figurative, semi-abstract and abstract. I find my inspirations from shapes, colours and materials. Most of my work is on mixed media, on paper, canvas, cardboard and wooden panels. On these I use a mixture of acrylic paint, acrylic spray, watercolours, epoxy resin, charcoal, gold foil, pastel, oil paint, oil spray paint and ink.

I also experiment with materials and objects in everyday life such as crushed glass, cotton fabrics, cardboard, nylon fabric, aluminium foil, sand, building cement, polyfiller, glue and sea shells. These help give many of my artworks a textured and 3D effect, sometimes subtle and sometimes more pronounced.

In addition to original works of art, I offer limited edition prints on aluminium plate, quality paper and canvas.