This summer the roses are blue; the wood is of glass. The earth, draped in its verdant cloak, makes as little impression upon me as a ghost. It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere. – André Breton, excerpt from the First Manifesto of Surrealism.
For Nigatu Tsehay, art is a fundamentally interrogative process. While it may not always yield definitive answers, painting allows him to grapple with important questions, and to use his own visual language as a means of reflection and communication. The specific characters and objects that come to life on his canvases serve primarily as a means of exploring universal themes, like individual silken threads which when woven together reveal the recognisable pattern of a spider’s web.