Mural Painting in Western Kenya

Abstract

with murals. This article focuses on the historical and artistic growth of this 20th-century tradition. Western Kenya is a fertile upland plateau that slopes gently to the eastern shores of Lake Victoria. The Baluyia,' a Bantu-speaking agricultural people, gradually settled in Western Province during the last five hundred years. They comprise at least eighteen subgroups, which, until this century, were autonomous political units tied together by a recognition of shared social and cultural values. The Baluyia have a dispersed settlement pattern, and each homestead is sited on the highest portion of a family's land holding.2 The traditional residential compound includes one or more houses, granaries, shrines, and cattle pens, all protected by an enclosure of bushes. Circular in plan, houses consist of a wooden framework, mud walls, and a coneshaped thatched roof. They vary in size according to the needs and the wealth of the occupants, and in proportion and roof contour among the subgroups. The traditional round-plan house has been partially supplanted in this century by square-plan houses introduced by missionaries and colonial officials. At present, in most Baluyia communities there is a mix of types, including round-plan houses with mud walls and thatched roofs, square-plan houses with mud walls and thatched or corrugated-iron roofs, and square-plan houses with brick or cinder-block walls and corrugated-iron or ceramic tile roofs. It is the round- and square-plan mud-wall types that may receive the murals discussed here. Mural traditions are not unknown in