I just looked at a lot of things. And that’s how I learnt about art, by looking at it.

I depict my life and experiences in my works of art.

I read all these books and I had the feeling that just reading things is not enough. I also wanted to create my own stuff, to create something new.

To me, art has always been a fun way to be creative.

So, I do a lot of things with my hands; from Aromatherapy to reflexology, massage. I have different escentric things that I do. But I enjoy readings, watching films and listening to a lot of music. So, when I’m writing, I intend to listen to music. When I’m selling my fabrics, I’m having fun as well.

Making our art, we make artful lives.

We make art because we like art. We’re drawn to certain kinds of work because
we’re inspired by people doing that work.

I spend a majority of my time thinking, and reading: Trying to find the angle that no one else would think to depict. I am always fearful of producing obvious things. While all art is at least tangentially political (the second you publicly place a mark on a piece of paper you will piss SOMEONE off), mine is deliberately overtly political. I take issues and events and try desperately to make sense of them. Like a columnist, I practice opinion journalism except I actually draw my conclusions, so to speak.

But trying to be a painter did teach me to look at the world in a very particular way—looking very closely at things, at colors, at how things form themselves in space — and I've always been grateful for that. You have all this space, and you have a figure: what do you do with it? And in a way that’s what all art is. How do we find a place for our creatures, or inventions, in this incoherent space into which we’re thrown?

My passion and determination for art, textile printing and business has opened doors to a number of opportunities.

I taught myself to make furniture and then started a furniture factory that still exists. But I realized I wanted to be around creative people. I started to travel within Africa, and discovered people making fashion and design pieces that were contemporary iterations of what you see traditionally—not what we would call contemporary in the Western sense, but in our context. And I thought that was very intriguing.

All art is the expression of experience in some medium.

I used to spend a lot of time with artists and designers and I had a lot of friends that were doing creative things and I enjoyed spending time with them.

I love learning about other artists’ processes so much; I don’t know why. It’s like a magpie-collecting hobby of mine. I find it incredibly inspiring, and just as a human being, I’m like, God, I love people. I love it when people devote themselves to something that is greater than themselves, and they work at it.