“The joy of painting is enormous…”

Though he was born in 1983 the statements framed in his paintings seem to be testimonials of centuries. According to this young talented artist should definitely be without any kind of boundaries, a reflection of eras. Let’s meet today’s guest: Berhe Riesom.

-When did you recognize your talent?

Honestly it would be hard for me to say because ever since elementary school I knew I loved playing with colors besides admiring pictures and drawings of any kind; lines but I never thought I was gifted with a special capacity till junior high. Whenever we had class projects or assignments I started representing many of our preps along with illustrations that was when my teachers started noticing and helped me in nourishing my talent.

–Seems like you have a lot of paintings that represent the rural life style?

Yes since that experience is really close to me. I would paint my mother and my grandmother doing their daily rural choruses or my father sharpening his farm tools, and so many other daily, simple and humble events of the rustic life. See the simplicity of the countryside pastoral-bucolic life style happens to amaze me a lot. I am very attracted to the humility and modesty of real people in a real humble life: people whom are spiritually and mystically connected with nature as it is definitely insurance to their survival. And since I grew up in the county side this aspects are very special and close to my own personal familiarity.

-You created a statement for yourself as an artist in the past three to four years. What is the secret?

There is no secret, I understood that a passionate drive alone wouldn’t do so I took painting and art classes to widen my knowledge in which I started basing my own productions, as a result I managed to enrich my art works. Everything works better if it is backed up by a didactic trait.

-What style of painting do you use?

I started out with realism and but during the exhibition I had in the inauguration of the 100th anniversary of the Eritrean rail road: a lot of artist advised me to pursue cubism and I did, matter of fact I tried to work on cubism and surrealism and I had really satisfying outcomes so now I usually follow this two charms.

-“The Blue People”, tell us something about this specific paint of yours. It has unquestionably a lot of fans.

Well, it is true. I actually didn’t expect it to a hit of these huge lengths but it ended up wowing a lot of people. It a surrealistic painting in which I used a lot of blue as a metaphor of cohesion. Blue is the gathered up color of the waters sea and the clouds up in the sky. I wanted to signify the unity and integrity of our people.

-You say art is a reflection of time, how so?

I would give you just one word “limit less”. Within a painting one can express a span of life or history in just colors and some line, and the best part about arts is the interpretation every each of us can have without any restrictions.

-Anything you would like to point out before we end?

I would like to use this opportunity to encourage our young artists to come forward and fearlessly direct their talent to create some wonderful artistic creation, because justly we have many  beautifully talented and undiscovered young once out there.

-Thanks for your time.

Thank you for having me!