Artist brings life into pictures
WHEN you look at his art work, you cannot tell the difference between the drawing and the original picture.
That is how good 24-year-old Liberty Shuro’s work is. This budding artist uses art to breathe life into still pictures.
Shuro was born in Bulawayo 1996 but is now based in Gweru where he is staying with his parents.
“I was introduced to art when I was eight years old after I saw the beautiful things that pencils could do such as creating texture, depth and illusions. I started drawing cartoons as a young boy and I fell in love with art,” he said.
As he continued schooling, his passion for art also grew as he started drawing portraits.
He continued to improve his paintings with inspiration from other great artists such as Dirk Dzimirsky, Kelvin Okafor and other locally based artists such as John Mahove and Marvellous Mangena.
So real looking are Shuro’s drawings that one would mistake them for the original photograph.
Shuro wants to portray life in his work and works predominantly in drawing, although he uses other mediums such as paint.
He said when he started, he faced the challenge of limited support from his family. In 2015 he decided that he would take art as a career resulting in him enrolling at Mutare Polytechnic for a one-year course in Art and Design in 2016.
Shuro has won several awards at the Tertiary Institutions Festival of Arts in Zimbabwe. He has exhibited his work at Verandah Gallery and Wild Geese Art festival in Harare.
He is working on a project for the International Botanical Art Exhibition to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa next year.
His work has been sold to International galleries such as the Cultural Heritage Gallery located in Arusha, Tanzania.
However, Shuro says he is facing some challenges bordering on poor support locally due to economic challenges the country is facing.
“There is stiff competition in his field, lack of knowledge from the local people is also another problem as people do not know the importance and value of art,” he said.
There is also shortage of quality art materials from the local industry to the extent that artists have to import some from other countries such as the United States.
Shuro thinks that to address some of these challenges affecting local people especially in Zimbabwe, educational campaigns must be introduced at schools.
Shuro did his primary education at Takunda Primary School in Gweru. In 2008, he attended Mkoba 1 High School for his secondary education but later transferred to Herentals College where he wrote his Ordinary Level examinations.