Riziki Kateya
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Biography
Riziki Kateya, a Maasai artist, is Tanzania's only botanical illustrator. She is from a family of artistic talent, her father is an accomplished realist and abstract painter and her mother is a jeweler. Following in her father's footsteps, she would display artwork at his shows. Later she was encouraged to pursue a diploma in Fine Arts at Tanzania's leading art school, Bagamoyo College of Art.
In her final year she won a scholarship to study botanical illustration at the Kew Gardens in London with Christabel King one of England's leading illustrators and instructors.
Riziki has had two exhibits in London, England - one at the Natural History Museum in 2004 and another at Kew Gardens in 2005. She has also exhibited in Dar es Salaam Tanzania's capital city.
Artist's Statement
Since I was very young I have had a love of expressing my feelings and imagination and depicting everyday life through art. This form of expression was more intense for me than using words.
My desire to do botanical illustration was very sudden. My enthusiasm for it grew in 2004 while I was at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London. While training with Ms. Christabel King, one of the masters of botanical illustration, she persuaded me that I could succeed in this field if I was ready for a lot of work.
Ms. King was an inspiration - I was left breathless by her work. While training with her, I realized a new passion for flowers that I had never dreamt of before. I had only thought of botanical illustration as scientific, not artistic. It requires measuring, observing, colour sensitivity, flower dissection, accuracy and being patient. This is what is requires to be a botanical illustrator. This seems very scientific but, when I'm producing beautiful images it feels artistic to me.
I aspire to produce work that is as brilliant as Ms. King's – to reach the highest level in this field. After having a large collection of endemic species of Tanzania's rare wild flowers, I intend to produce a book that is a good record of the precious plants of my country. I want to create this record as an inspiration for other artists to become botanical illustrators for the sake of nature, the environment and art.