Local artist to seek inspiration in Muscat

In contrast to his warlike forbears, however, Daryl Nero’s forays away from home are planned to discover subjects of artistic inspiration, images to immortalise on large bold canvases, or as delicate watercolours. Unless he is travelling, Nero is generally hard at work, but he agreed to meet me shortly after Christmas, in his studio at the end of a quiet close in Emerald Hill.
A cowbell jangled as the gate opened and I drove slowly up a bumpy driveway, past a wild area at the bottom of the garden that was being prepared to grow maize and sunflowers. Nero was waiting for me at the entrance to the studio, a pleasant north facing space crowded with easels and paints, and numerous works in progress. I sat down in front of a watercolour of a large and decorative pig, while Daryl went briefly into the kitchen, returning with Christmas cake (made by the artist) and filter coffee.
Nero’s forbears, who were pastoral farmers, travelled by steamship to the south coast of Natal, arriving in 1866. Although Nero has an affinity for cattle and other types of livestock, fate never intended him to raise prize-winning Brahmans: his early talent for drawing and painting led directly to a highly successful artistic career. After studying fine art and architecture at the University of Natal, Nero won a scholarship to the Croydon College of Art, and later studied theatre design at Sadlers Wells.
After a four-year stint working with theatre in education at a college in Exeter, Nero returned to South Africa, and for several years lectured in fine art at Durban Westville. A visit to Botswana in 1976 gave the artist his first taste of the bush, and in 1981 he began a new life, moving permanently to Zimbabwe.
Setting up an art studio on a farm in Raffingora, Nero became everybody’s landscape artist of choice. Rural scenes, idyllic homesteads, farming scenes and tobacco barns were immortalised in watercolour and pen and ink drawings. Trips to Mana Pools and Gonare zhou national parks further inspired the artist’s love of wildlife, and he went big, painting elephant, buffalo and hippo, each study set against the breath taking back drop of Zimbabwean scenery.
It was at an art exhibition at the Harare Sheraton Hotel, curated in 1986 by art lover and educationist Suzanne Joscelyne, that I first encountered the startlingly filmic paintings of elephant herds that made Nero a household name. Whether depicted in pastel colours in front of an ancient and wraithlike baobab tree, or resplendent in earthy colours in the miombo woodlands of Hwange national park, Nero’s pachyderms have an immediacy and beauty seldom captured by other wildlife artists. Various studies of cattle, a source of pride and wealth in Zimbabwe, also featured at this exhibition.
After the land invasions finally forced Nero to move to the city in 2004, it became clear that the huge sculptural forms of hippo, buffalo and elephant were not the artist’s only inspiration. A hugely popular exhibition in 2005 of the Tumbuka dance crew illustrated his fascination with the grace and beauty of the human form, and journeys to Italian beauty spots such as Florence and Venice inspired vividly evocative scenes of these ancient cities.
When Nero travels, he makes sketches of a figure, a building, or a landscape that captures his imagination. Working small in pen, ink and watercolours, the sketches are later used in his studio to create the large art works of oil and acrylic that hang in numerous galleries and in the homes and work places of collectors in Zimbabwe and abroad.
Trips to Mozambique inspired a series of enticing palm-fringed beaches, dramatic dhows floating on the warm Indian Ocean, and architectural studies of buildings dating back to bygone eras. On a visit to the remote north Mozambique island of Ibo, which was once an Arab trading post and was visited by Vasco da Gama in 1502, Nero made studies of the historic architecture, including the impressive Cathedral of Ibo Island, built by the Portuguese in the 1700s.
2013 will be an exciting year for Nero, who plans to visit Muscat of Oman in February.  ‘Life is too short to dabble’, said Nero, as he spoke about Oman’s untouched coastline, mountains and deserts, and about Muscat’s forts, palaces and old walled city. It’s more than likely that Nero’s next exhibition, if short on wildlife, will have much to offer in the way of exotic architecture, mysterious figures and desert landscapes.