James Kitamirike

”I strive to achieve the best in me.  I love my work.”

Kitamirike is a self-taught Ugandan artist who was first recognized by his grandmother while he was still a child.  Continuing as a commissioned portrait artist, he quickly expanded his technique and vision to become a noncommercial artist.  This path, however, was interrupted when Uganda fell into political turmoil in the late 1970's.  Kitamirike moved to Kenya and later to the United States, where he continues to let his East African roots show through his art.   Interested in abstraction and realism, he (along with several other Ugandan artists) began combining the two techniques together.  The visual results, combined with African subject matter are unique, offering an aesthetic sensibility that incorporates Renaissance style shadings and realism with modernist abstraction.