Kisumu’s Maasai Market is a visual echo chamber — rows of stalls packed with soapstone carvings, curio wares, and familiar landscapes from the lakeside. But tucked at the far end is a jarring departure: a studio bursting with bold, abstract canvases and surrealist visions. This is the world of George Omondi Odongo.
George’s space is less a shop than a squeezed studio, barely enough room to pivot between easel and canvas. He paints standing, pausing only to dab his brush on a damp cloth, fully immersed in compositions that defy the region’s market-driven expectations.
“In Kisumu, the art is often dictated by what sells,” he says. “You either meet the market’s appetite or go hungry.”
A portrait of artist George Omondi Odongo at the Maasai Market in Kisumu.
Photo credit: Pool
George paints full-time, a rarity in a region where visual artists are frequently forced into commercial compromise. He’s been doing so for eight years, part of the final cohort to study arts and crafts in both primary and secondary school before honing his skills at Mwangaza Art Studio alongside peers like Coaster Ojwang’.
His style, a hybrid of semi-abstract and semi-surrealist techniques, is both his calling and his gamble. Where local art buyers seek familiarity, George offers emotion, ambiguity, and layered expression. His pieces often feature underlaid canvases sculpted to mimic cartographic reliefs, drenched in richly contrasting colours.
“It’s like a dance,” he says. “I let the canvas lead.”
And then there’s the woman, the recurring subject in his work. “Men are lineal,” he shrugs. “Women offer curves, mystery, complexity, they challenge the brush.”
His influences are as deliberate as his themes. Chief among them: Patrick Mukabi, the Nairobi-based artist whose groundedness and prolific mentorship echo in George’s own practice.
“Mukabi reminds me that humility and hard work matter more than acclaim,” he says.
It’s this ethos that fuels George’s outreach: studio sessions with young artists, school talks, and informal mentorships that rival the energy he puts into his canvases.
“Seeing someone else take up the brush with purpose, that feeds me more than money sometimes.”
Still, the market has its moments. His first painting, awarded as a guest gift while he was in high school, earned him Sh5,000. His most lucrative sale: a Sh120,000 piece snapped up by a Chinese collector at a Nairobi show.
"The Road to Soft Life" by George Omondi Odongo at the Maasai Market in Kisumu.
Photo credit: Pool
“I had underquoted it. The curators fixed the price. It sold.”
But George is patient. “I don’t feel stifled,” he says. “Perspective takes time to shift. Lately, interior designers have started incorporating art into their work. It’s pushing residents to view art not just as decoration but as cultural punctuation.”
His practice spans greyscale experiments, bold abstractions, and textured collages. For all the market’s inertia, Odongo’s trajectory shows that Kisumu’s visual language — long tethered to the lake and its livelihoods — might be slowly evolving.
And at the edge of the Maasai Market, in a cramped, chaotic studio, that evolution has already begun.
