Eltayeb Dawelbait is a Sudanese artist who took part in a group exhibition titled “Painting With and Without Brushes,” in Asmara, January 12 to 19, 2009 at The Gallery. The show was sponsored by the Peace-building Center for the Horn of Africa (P.C.H.A), the American Embassy in Eritrea, and the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the P.F.D.J. The art show was followed by a ten-day workshop of the same title conceived for upcoming Eritrean artists to familiarize themselves with new techniques and share experiences with professional artists.

 

Following the interview that appeared on February 5, on Hassaan Ali, we now present excerpts from a conversation with Eltayeb Dawelbait who is a freelance textile designer and a painter.

 

Q: First, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

 

E.D: I was born in the Sudan and I graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Khartoum, at the Textile Design Department. I left Sudan in 1997 for Kenya where I am now based and work as a freelance textile designer and a painter.

 

Q: What type of media do you work with?

 

E.D: For my paintings, I work either with mixed media on paper or with acrylic on canvas and for my textile designs, I work with chemicals.

 

Q: When looking at your paintings, one notices that you often draw the same face in many different ways. Why is this face of particular interest to you?

 

E.D: I think I try to draw the portrait of a man, which is certainly a Sudanese man. Sometimes I think it is a portrait of my father, sometimes I think it is a self-portrait. But I do this face over and over again and I think I try to capture something of my own self.

 

Q: Being a Sudanese artist living in Kenya, has it influenced your work in any way?

 

E.D: Critics can say from looking at my work. I live in Kenya but they can distinguish Sudanese influences because they know Sudanese art and they can identify it in my own work. By inspiration, I work as an artist from the world, inspired by the world. Art is an international language and we can connect with everyone with this language. It is easy to communicate; it is easy to be inspired, influenced by other cultures and other arts, easy to exchange ideas. Like in Asmara where I am right now, I can be inspired by colors, by the atmosphere, the environment.

 

Q: As a textile designer, are you mostly interested in creating patterns?

 

E.D: I am interested in textile design as a whole: finding new types of designs, doing designs on different types of fabrics. I also do woodblock prints on fabric and use bleach, and I hand paint on fabric, meaning that I directly paint on the fabric.

 

Q: So, do you combine fashion and art?

 

E.D: Yes, I work in fashion and also in art. But I prefer to say fashion and painting because even fashion is art. It is all art, but it is different streams. Like painting, sculpture, ceramics, for me it is all art.

 

Q: Since you work in two different fields, do you ever mix techniques?

 

E.D: When one works in two related but different fields we call that shift-imaging.  While working on two kinds of art, one shifts from painting to design and from design to painting: The two different media inspire each other. For example, something you use for design can become interesting when you try the same technique on your paintings. You know, discovering and connecting tools, using fabric tools on paintings, all this is very enriching. It goes together.

 

Q: As a designer, what can you say about the importance of tools in art making?

 

E.D: I have learned to use tools that are not usual. I use different things. I use whatever I think is interesting and for me everything is interesting. I use things I find on the road, for example, or in a trash can and I use it as a tool.

 

Q: In fact, crossing over from one medium to another, is that a method you use to enhance your creativity?

 

E.D: Shifting from one medium to another and working with different tools opens up creativity, yes of course. I can combine textile designs and paintings; it is all experimenting on tools and colors; researching for better kinds of experiments. When you are looking for something new, you look for another step, then another step. It is a cycle, never-ending. For me, it is a kind of experiment that continues on and on. There are always things to be discovered. Picasso in his last paintings was still experimenting. The last piece of Henry Moore can be inspiring to me, and I can do masterpieces in the future...

 

Q: How do you get your inspiration?

 

E.D: I believe your environment is your inspiration. Images connect with elements around you. You learn to pick up from what you see: a doorknob, the form of a vegetable, a cat crossing the road, it is all part of a possible composition.  It is like a scenario, parts of reality. Everyday you come across things that can be inspiring: you see new things that inspire you to enhance your life, to connect to your soul, that make you richer. It helps you to connect to your spiritual life and achieve a kind of transparency.

 

Q: What do you think are important elements in developing one’s sense of creativity?

 

E.D: The workshop for example is part of developing creativity. It is an opportunity to pick up people’s mind, get them to think outside of the closed borders of traditional art. It is important to learn to see that art is everywhere around you.  Everything around you can be transformed in art. Art comes from experience. When you grow up, you are influenced by everything around you, and then it is built in you: your talent and your soul. It becomes spiritual. It is etched in you. Slowly, you pick up things in daily life, then, as you develop, you update your experience. There are steps to reach with experience: Overtime, your sensitivity changes in how you catch what you see and how you store it in your mind: colors, forms, etc. Spiritual human beings have the capacity to connect things between them. Art has that kind of transparency. So, I would say two very important elements are talent and memory.

 

Q: How can young artists learn to develop that kind of seeing, that kind of talent?

 

E.D: First, there needs to be already some kind of ability, an inner core, in the soul, in the mind. And then, you need to work hard: meaning you need to connect with art fields, live in an art atmosphere, an art environment. You need to read books, participate in workshops, go to exhibitions, to museums, and go to the movies, concerts, etc. You have to reach out to all the arts. So not only do you have to educate yourself about art and art history, but you also have to connect with everything around you: connect with the folklore and the mythology of your country for example. This builds up knowledge that will guide you, and it builds up your identity to reflect your culture and your environment.

 

Q: And how does tradition relate to creativity, would it not seem rather contradictory?

 

E.D: When I was in art school, the first year, we studied in all the different departments. And every year, we went to different regions of the Sudan and saw different environments, landscapes, and learned about the different arts in the different regions. So one was able to learn to see differences in the folklores, in the folk-arts, in handcrafts… This builds you as an artist. You begin to see geographically your homeland and it is etched in your mind and it becomes part of your identity as an artist. You even get the opportunity to sit with local people and see how they do their crafts.

There are countries with a tradition of skills development through patient learning and seeing. In China, for example, when you are in college, you are sent for one year to train with craft people who specialize in tiles, pottery, metal, etc. and you sit with them to learn. You train to be patient, to use your hands, to use the tools, to know about the material, until it becomes part of you. You then reach a certain level of mastery, which allows you to develop as an artist.

 

Q: Is there a direct relationship between learning how to use tools and the development of creativity in design or painting?

 

E.D: To create anything you need tools and materials. Imagine that you are an artist in the jungle and you cannot get your standard tools, what do you do? You try to connect to the environment. You try to use the environment: you cut wood to make tools. You make a spear to kill animals. You tie ropes to climb trees and get fruits or honey. You use wood to make houses. You try to figure out different ways to catch water. Artists have to be creative in the same way. In Cave Arts, people used smashed flowers to get pigments for their colors, or from the ground and sand. We can see that tools made from stones and bones helped to create very beautiful kinds of art that still exist now.

 

Q: When speaking about the workshop you conducted with Hassaan Ali and Ermias Ekube for the young Eritrean artists, you said it was a most interesting experience for you, in what sense?

 

E.D: Yes it gave me a chance to learn more for myself as an artist. By sharing techniques with others, an atmosphere is created for the exchange of ideas and for new ideas to emerge. Artists are interesting to me.  People have the ability to learn and do a lot of things when they experiment with freedom, without using normal tools, without referring to the principles of painting. It was very inspiring to me and the spirit was great. Meeting with the people, having coffee and talking about the city.

 

Q: Finally, for you, what is the relationship between Art and Peace?

 

E.D: Peace is art. Peace means Selam: celebrating freedom, development, to be at home with your family and friends. Peace is related to development, building human resources, creativity, the mind, music, theatre, cinema… people going to work everyday, producing goods in factories, you cannot get any of these without peace. So for me, it is an important point to maintain peace by art, because art connects people, it has the strength of love...Peace and Art:  It is like two pieces of a puzzle, two elements in a patchwork, like two colors blending together: when you fix them, they generate power. When you have peace and you have art, life is a symphony.

 

Thank you so much Eltayeb for sharing your experience with us.