Bondumani Art is a collective in Freetown turning oil, fabric, wall and pencil into proof that a visual-arts life is a livable, lovable future.
In a city where "be a doctor or a lawyer" is still the loudest advice given to children, two Sierra Leonean painters decided to be neither.
Bondumani Art was founded in Freetown by Sahr Songu Mbriwa — an internationally collected hyperrealistic oil painter — and Aishatu Jalloh, a full-time visual artist with a sharp eye for colour and a softer one for stories. Together they built a place where fabric gets painted like canvas, children learn that brushes are professional tools, and walls in Freetown stop asking to be ignored.
We are a gallery, a studio, a commission house, a classroom, and occasionally — when the bamboo village fills up — a quiet place to sleep.
Some we've been doing for a decade. Some started when a child asked for a portrait of their grandmother. All of them move.
Hyperrealistic oil commissions — from weddings to memorials, sized to your wall and loaded with likeness.
Studies that take Freetown's everyday objects seriously.
Bold pigment that stays put and photographs sharp under Freetown sun.
Public walls, private compounds, hotel exteriors — stories sized up for the street.
Clothing and cloth painted by hand to live in sun, salt and Atlantic air.
Our beating heart — training the next generation of West-African painters, one Saturday at a time.
Internationally collected oil painter. Works unveiled by the US Ambassador to Sierra Leone and the Sierra Leonean Ambassador to the US. A CNN feature (March 2023) called him one of West Africa's pioneers challenging the idea that art can't feed a family.
SahrSongu1@gmail.com →"If you have a talent and passion for anything follow your heart. Do what you love and don't look down on yourself. No matter how many times people try to put you down keep pushing and one day you will reap the benefits of your hard work."
Saturdays belong to the children. We've trained dozens of Freetown kids in still life, portraiture, colour theory and confidence — building toward a full Bondumani Art School.
Our sister property — Bondumani Bamboo Village — sits on the Whale Bay River, York ↔ Black Johnson. Eco A-frame cabins, a river spa, floating lunches that drift downstream, and a curated on-site gallery hung with the same brushes that paint here in Freetown.
Enter the bamboo village
Tell us about the person, the wall, the wedding, the child, the fabric. We'll tell you the medium, the price, and the timeline.