The Painters Who Never Left Oyster Bay
Sixty years after Edward Said Tingatinga mixed his first can of bicycle enamel, the cooperative he founded still paints the same hardboard squares.
I first saw a Tingatinga painting at Coco Beach in 2016 — a giraffe, seven flat colors, every outline exactly two strokes of a brush, the hardboard still sharp with bicycle enamel. The painter wanted twelve thousand shillings. I paid fifteen and carried it to my guesthouse in Oyster Bay. It hung above my bed for three weeks and I never stopped noticing new details in those seven colors.
Enamel on Hardboard, Nothing More
Eighteen painters share three rooms behind a tin gate on Mandela Road, past a mango tree that drops fruit on the parking lot every December. Each works on hardboard from the same supplier in Kariakoo. The palette has not changed since 1968: yellow, green, blue, crimson, orange, white, black — seven tins from the hardware store on Samora Avenue. Edward Tingatinga chose those colors because they were cheap, and the cooperative kept the same seven tins from season to season.