A painter’s everyday tale

By 8am, Peter Ndalama, a Blantyre -based painter, is already at his shop working on papers to produce pictures for sale.

He calls the shop his office and you can never find him relaxing.

“Art is my full time job. It is not like other jobs where you can say I have finished my work. It is too involving and to finish a product takes hours and even days.”

“However, ideas continue to come and we always strive to make new products different from any other artist so we can make money,” said Ndalama in a recent interview.

Although, he was grateful to host a journalist, he could not stop painting. He welcomed me while scribbling on the papers around him and the chat ended while he was drawing.

His shop is along the road, but despite the noise from the people and vehicles he never put his eyes away from the paper.

“If I make any unnecessary stain on the paper, the whole work is messed up and so I make sure when I am starting any new piece, my entire mind is on it till I finish,” he said.

Ndalama says for his job to be successful, he needs paint, a ruler and papers. He also revealed that painters do not use any type of paper.

“Paintings look nice on recycled papers and that is what I use for all my products,” he said.

Some painters buy recycled papers for their work. Ndalama does not.

He is a product of the Paper Making Education Trust (Pamet) which trained many people across the country in recycled paper making.

He says he joined the trust through Youth Arm Organisation, which he worked for between 1997 and 2001 in Blantyre.

“I learnt a lot from Pamet, for example, making recycled paper envelopes, book covers, dust bins and chairs from recycled paper,” he said.

Today, Ndalama makes all these products at his shop and decorates them with paintings.

Apart from these, he also draws on cloth for wall hanging and bill boards.

But does what he earns surpass the effort applied to produce these products?

Ndalama in strong terms agrees to this, but says the challenging factor is the pace of the sales.

“There is gold in art, but the time it takes to sell a product affects the realisation of the profits in the business,” he said.

Ndalama said the main challenge is that there is no market for paintings in Malawi and they rely on tourists who visit the country.

“If Malawians were part of the market, we could be talking different stories today. Malawians do not appreciate art and see no value in buying artwork. This is a burden to our business,” he said, adding that local people do not appreciate time spent on art products and therefore want lower prices.