Biography

Joseph Cartoon was born in 1976 in Ngecha, Kenya. In 1994, he joined the Banana Hill Art Group, an offspring of the Ngecha Artists’ Association. In the 1990s, the Ngecha Artists’ Association was a group of young, self-taught artists, without academic or artistic education, founded by Sane Wadu, Wanju Brush and Chain Muhandi. The Banana Hill Art Group was led by the artist Shine Tani, who became Joseph Cartoon’s mentor. These artists developed a naïve, figurative, expressionistic technique of painting. They were promoted and marketed as ‘not academically spoilt’ by the then owner and curator of the renowned Gallery Watatu in Nairobi, the late Ruth Schaffner. Joseph Cartoon was a member of Banana Hill Art Group until 2001. He developed his own authentic, semi-abstract, ornamental, pattern-rich and colourful style of painting, which remained virtually unchanged over the years, featuring strong and powerful African women as his predominant subject. Joseph Cartoon has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in East Africa, Europe and South Korea. In 2002, he participated in the Scholars Exhibition of the Royal Overseas League in London and was awarded a one-year Artist-in-Residency in the UK. He returned to Kenya in 2003 and has since then been living as a freelance artist in Banana Hill, Nairobi.