Introducing the art of Charles YerOuma Baldeh

Charles Charles YerOuma Baldeh with his Village Luthier - who 'works all day, from dawn to dusk, making his wonderful musical instruments'

The first exhibition of paintings by Gambian-born artist Charles YerOuma Baldeh, was unveiled at St Thomas More's church in Manor House, north London last Sunday.

While working throughout the pandemic as a Service Operator for London Transport, Charles managed to find time to revive his passion for art - and painted a glorious series, depicting the people, wildlife and landscapes of his childhood home. His work covers a terrific range of moods and styles - from quiet evening scenes with cattle at home settled and resting after a day's grazing, a yellow baboon mother and by a termite mound under the searing midday sun; and a lively village dance in brilliant blues and reds - you can almost hear the music.

Charles said: "Growing up in a small village in Gambia, in West Africa, I remember from the age of 10 or 11 being passionate about my Mum's older brother, my uncle's huge herd of cattle. He had at least 800 at the time. I spent all weekends and after school together with my two cousins herding them. Compared to her brother, my Mum of course owned only about six cows. She married my father in 1945. They were baptised and became Catholics with the Spiritan Missionaries of Kimmage from Dublin who came to Gambia in the 1940s.

"The passion I had for cattle in my childhood stayed with me and today I am able to draw from those happy times and bring back those memories through my paintings.

"On a Saturday morning for example, after milking, I can remember we always had to walk for five or six miles to the grasslands and meadows of green pasture on the banks of the big river that, snakelike, meandered its way from the West of The Gambia to the edge of the country in the East.

"We spent the whole day there and then returned to the village with the herd around 4pm. Throughout that time also drought and parched earth and difficult keeping our animals alive was part of the story. I remember my uncle telling us stories about how when he was young, the land used to be green and lush and how it used to rain abundantly. The land was teeming with elephants, zebras giraffes, wildebeests and hyenas.

"Somehow the dryness over the years forced all these animals to migrate and they moved away further and further towards East Africa and Southern Africa where is it wetter and greener. You will find in my paintings a representation of some of these animals as well.

"When in some years some of our cattle died from starvation because of drought there was sadness in the family.

"What was remarkable was that in the same way as the animals had been forced to migrate, my great grandparents had also migrated from Mopti in Mali. These Fulani cattle herders that had gone west to Gambia - a distance of 1,600 km in search of water and green pasture for their cattle have once again been followed by drought and desertification.

In many of his paintings Charles has captured the changing face of Africa affected by climate change.

For more information, email Charles on: yero.maro@gmail.com. Mob: 07794730761.