Michael Ghaui

Born 1950 in Tanzania

 

 

Born and raised on a farm in Tanzania, Michael Ghaui is one of the leading portraitists of the African wilderness. His great interest in the depiction of nature and animals goes back to his early childhood when he began to paint. Ghaui eventually studied art in Kenya and received a degree in agriculture from the University of London. During his studies in Great Britain he spent a lot of time painting thereby using any opportunity to return to the African savannah.

In 1978 he started a professional career as a painter, his work having been exhibited in Nairobi, Kenya and the US since 1975. In 1987 Ghaui participated in the prominent show “Wildlife in Art” at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wisconsin, USA. His painting ”Ruaha Tuskers – African Elephants“ was celebrated as the best original painting of 1984 by the renowned Wildlife Art News magazine. Ghaui’s works can be found in many private collections.

With his wife and family, Ghaui lives near Lake Naivasha in Kenya. He continues to go on safaris to study the main subject of his painting, nature and wildlife, with whom he lives in harmony. As a keen observer of the African bush, he skilfully captures the atmosphere of a wildness that vanishes more and more. With a realistic and likewise impressionist painting style Ghaui gives his works an incredible vitality. It is not only because of the authenticity of his paintings that Ghaui is considered to be one of the most significant representatives of wildlife art.