Success is a milestone that caps skills, researches and unstinting thrust. As such it is far from a windfall. Dr. Artist Lemma Guya, who showcased this fact, was born in 1929 Oromia in eastern Shewa zone at Ada Liben village.
This painter that is an apt observant of his surrounding, developed the skill of painting from his potter mother. Adopting a home-grown style she often decorated her pottery works and the walls of their hut with pictures using an assortment of clay types.
Lemma spent his childhood herding, tending the farm and helping his parents in domestic chores and the like. As he proved indispensible at home his parents were not willing to let him go to school had it not been to his uncle who dissuaded Guy to send Lemma to school enumerating the benefits in store for the family if Lemma gets educated.
When he became 14, Lemma was sent to school to attend class with a bit younger children of the gentry and well off parents. Attending class with students that were not one’s age mates and exhibiting eloquence in Amharic language, to which he was foreign, exposed him to ridicule. Bearing the discomfort and studying hard, outsmarting rivals he had managed to make a rank student out of himself.
Once, as usual Emperor Haile Selassie came to His palace In Bishoftu (Debrezeit). Seizing the opportunity, making an airplane model, along with his friend, the sagacious Lemma showed it to the Emperor thereby winning His go ahead tap on the back.
“Which walk of life do you want to pursue?” when the Emperor asked him he said “I want to be a pilot!” This way Lemma and his friend got an education chance in the air force. He became Aircraft Mechanic.
During the Emperor’s regime, deployed in Eretria, the former province of Ethiopia, he worked as Aircraft technician under the Ethiopian air force for seven years.
As skill comes in tandem with practice if underpinned by interest and talent, he pushed the frontier of his painting skill after he joined the Ethiopian air force. While he was in Eretria, Lemma further developed his painting skill cleverly picking styles from less-willing foreign teachers.
Via this approach, he had also acquired the skill of making frames. As he adopted and adapted the skill well, his frames proved more durable than and as much elegant as the ones imported from abroad or made by foreigners here.
He as well had made reading books on painting a point of. This way he further developed his painting skill winning admiration.
After emerging from the rocky and arduous path of life with laurels, he did not sat complacent with this achievement of his. As the saying goes “Necessity is the mother of invention,” when constrained by canvas and brushes during the Derg regime, conducting researches he succeeded to come up with a groundbreaking painting style—capturing pictures on goat skins. In so doing, he popped up on the global art scene with a pioneering Ethiopian and also African painting style that took the world by surprise.
Via a research, creating a technique of preserving the skin he had made his style feasible. Through diligence and collecting a goat skin on holidays going door to door, he had made this fingerprint of his to send roots.
He had also come up with a technique of creating goat-skin mounted portraits. Giving different shapes to the furs and using colors to the faces in such a way he could effect color blending, Lemma had managed to come up with eye-catching portraits of African leaders with special emphasis on founding fathers.
Nelson Mandela’s and Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma are among the list. Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia as well as prominent personalities from both genders that contributed to their country were also atop his choice list of painting. In so doing, he has basked under the appreciation of many African leaders.
He had trained trainers who came from Senegal, South Africa and Nigeria to adopt his style. Regarding this pioneering style, in a prowess of a paradigm shift, he has managed to make Ethiopia a focus of attention.
Needless to say, Ethiopian art schools have to dig deep to document and bequeath this outshining style of his to generations to come. “I wonder how Ethiopian Art Schools accord a cold greeting to my works, while foreigners come here to pick my style and replicate it continent-wide?” he asks.
He has produced the portraits of several African leaders with special emphasis on the founding fathers of Africa Union.
To pay homage to the gallery he built in Bishoftu, so many researchers, government officials, politicians, teachers and different segments of society love to go there.
“Explaining things about my paintings to students that drop in at the gallery I established in Bishoftu affords me inexplicable gratification.” says this artist who is busy painting though drawing close to 90.While many yield to despair at their grasshopper ages his agility in full ripe age stuns many.
His overarching painting entitled Quanta (dried meat) is a testimonial that a painting could be a vehicle of lampooning corrupt and irresponsible officials that turns a blind eye, while natural resources which could be tapped for turning the lives of people around lay waste.
During the Derg regime, he was put behind bars for subtly exposing the aforementioned tragic episode. On grounds of the satiric and acerbic message he conveyed through this painting of his, he was forced to retire by way of Derg’s retaliatory measure. This painting also attacks the whites that try to siphon Africa’s resource using despots as Trojan horses.
During the era of Emperor Haile Selassie, he had done the commendable task of bringing forth two fundamental books on the ABCs of painting in collaboration with the ministry of education. Ethiopian painters that made it to the top feel a gratitude to his contribution. This contribution of his could be taken as bedrock in the country’s education history.
Regarding this lofty task, the emperor remarked “Indeed you deserve great appreciation for coming up with a nation-transforming task of your volition. We owe you a lot for your unstinting effort provided that those whom we sent abroad for scholarship outlaying money in millions have not done a quarter as much.”
He has done commendable job in the dissemination of Education, eradication of illiteracy and the opening of libraries in Ethiopia. He did also participated in humanitarian activities when the country was hard hit by drought during the emperor’s regime.
Participating
in the Ethio-Somalia war, he had discharged due responsibility of defending the
territorial integrity of the country.
He has also well documented testimonial useful for the country special related with people of Eretria.
As he has inspired many, his children, grandchildren and kindred souls are walking long following in his footsteps.
Taking the aforementioned tasks of his in to consideration, Jimma University had conferred him with an honorary doctorate degree. He has over 30 certificates of recognition from different national, continental and international organizations.
Numerous international and local media outlets had painted this lulu with bright hues in their reportages.
He conveys the message “Contemplating a short cut to wealth not gained by one’s sweat of the brow does not work. This generation should display love for work and aversion to corrupt practices.”
His wish is to see tranquility and peace reign on earth. So he vehemently advises Ethiopians to see to the time-old culture of peaceful coexistence. He is also appreciative of the ensued peace and reform.
The Ethiopian Herald Sunday Edition 18 August 2019
BY ALEM HAILU
