Biography
Painter George Mulaudzi museum and art gallery founder was born on the 14 may 1979 by the help of his grandmother Nakilyowa Matilda in the backyard of her home to a teenage mother one Nakyagaba Nabakawa Rita in Kireka Kampala Uganda. As a toddler, known to have been coiled by a python when laid down by the grandmother while she tilled her garden. One morning, one by the name Matilda Nakilyowa raised an alarm while on her farm only to be assisted by the would-be hunters on a hunt. The issue was that as usual, she had laid her grandson down and got onto her usual routine of tilling the ground for food for her family. When she opted to have a break, she took a walk to where she had laid her grandson. Shockingly she sighted a well grown python coiled around him and surprisingly with lots of giggles and happiness from her grandson George Mulaudzi with the python’s head right on top of his face.
With the snake looking right into her eyes, she was so traumatised that she couldn’t scream. She prayed to Hail Mary several times and after a pretty long time, the snake uncoiled itself and crawled away to the opposite direction of her. She made a few steps, picked up the baby and raised an alarm which saw local hunters come to her rescue. An instant hunt for the python in question began and when a local divine healer was consulted, he instructed that the python in question should not be killed but rather be brought to his shrine alive. In two days’ time one Mavirikata Kiwanuka Eneriko, who happens to be George Mulaudzi’s grandfather delivered the python alive at the local traditional healer’s shrine. The reading was that the young man George Mulaudzi should be introduced to his paternal ancestors as they were calling him home and such was the interpretation from the pythons one on one encounter.
After intensive divine consultations with various Divine Healers, one Nakilyowa Matilda was summoned to undertake spiritual healing initiation which she did with no hesitation as such was an ancestral calling. Being born and raised in Kireka exposed George Mulaudzi to playing with human bones and skulls from shallow mass graves of people that died as a result of torture under Idi Amini and Obote’s regimes. Day to day time in and around mass graves filled with human bones was scary at first but with time became normal and interesting. Being a child soldier became George Mulaudzi’s dream since he grew up seeing his community freely socialising with soldiers who many a time gave him delicious biscuits.
Seeing their armoured vehicles, smart uniforms they wore, lifestyle and high sense of respect the military earned got George Mulaudzi fascinated. Came toys of soldiers in camouflage uniform and armoured cars and ops all dreams were about the military. This paved-way for drawing, painting and moulding of his dream, armoured tanks, guns, cars and soldiers sinking him into the passion for art.
Passion For Art
As a young child in the early 1980’s, having worked in his grandmother’s local brew hang out at Kireka market as an entertainer to the would-be guests, George Mulaudzi got used to receiving tips whenever he excelled at his craft. Nakyagaba Nabakawa Rita being a business woman in the 1980’s took her son George Mulaudzi with as she travelled to rural areas of Uganda to buy stock of produce products such as rice from the Eastern part of Uganda, peanuts from the northern parts of Uganda, etc which products she would in turn sell for profit in the capital city of Uganda precisely in Kikuubo. Many a times George Mulaudzi being a child would be used to carry lump sums of money, passed none suspecting thieves, police and military roadblocks in which the military operatives all operated as thieves themselves.
George Mulaudzi sold Big G sweets to Khat users and playing cards to gamblers. He simultaneously merchandised empty soft drink bottles in Owino, Kisenyi, Bus za’baganda and Kiseka markets between 1990 and 1993. 1994 to 1997 merchandising clothes would take its course. From 1998 to 1999, around the same time gambling took its toll on him and he reverted back to painting as a way to cope with everything that was happening around him, solidifying his love for art.
Unlike his informal education, George Mulaudzi’s formal education was quite challenging. Just to mention but a few, he attended Twins Age Kindergarten, Kireka Home For Children With Special Needs, Kireka Seventh Day Adventist Boarding School, Old Kampala Primary School, Shimoni Demonstration School, Kyambogo College School, Nabumali High School, and in 1999 humbly completed his studies in Kololo Senior Secondary School. This saw George Mulaudzi calling it quits to formal education as enough was enough. If it wasn’t failure to pay school fees, then where to live would be a problem. If it wasn’t where to live, then with whom to live came into question. As if that was not enough, what to eat severally contributed to the turn of events in George’s Mulaudzi’s life.
On the 23rd of December 1999, during his grandfather’s tombstone unveiling in Kafumu, George’s uncle Alex Esperito Zibukuyimbwa took him up, nurturing him into construction and logistics.
A call from his grandmother would later get him back to his roots as he was losing it over and over. In 2000, digging pit latrines alongside labour work on a construction site landed him into logistics till 2002. With most of 2003 spent on the streets of Pretoria town, on the 30th October 2003, the entrepreneurship in him got him merging with two others one Mukasa and Ssemwogerere Katende Sulaiman in the purchase of an existing business in natural medicine from which we grew and became independent by the end of that very year.
Having grown up close to his grandmother saw him excel at this consultancy. This further exposed him to people from different walks of life growing his business interests to George Mulaudzi of the day. As an entrepreneur George Mulaudzi is the founder and owner of Entities such as George Mulaudzi, 132 Art Gallery, Men’s Health Clinics, Men Health Clinics, Sandton Men’s Clinic, George Mulaudzi Museum.
Children :
Stansteve Nkateko Mulaudzi, Katlego Wycliff Mulaudzi, Mankgodi Ritah Mulaudzi, just to mention.
Visit Us
Self taught Visual Artist and Successful Entrepreneur.