Terry Hirst

Terry Hirst (1932–2015), was a British-Kenyan cartoonist and one of the leading figures in Africa's post-independence "golden age" of art and scholarship from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s which saw a flowering of work in the arts, cinema and the academic world.

Terry Hirst was born in 1932 in Brighton in England.

From the 1940s to 1950, Hirst's thoughts and attitudes were strongly shaped by political cartoonists from across the political spectrum, including Low, Zec, Shepard, Illingworth, Lancaster, Cummings, Giles and Vicky.

But it never occurred to him to be a cartoonist.

He wanted to be an artist.

To the disappointment of his headmaster, Hirst turned down the opportunity to go to Oxford University and chose instead to take up a Fine Art course at the Brighton College of Art.

After he graduated he was soon appointed the Head of the Art Department at one of the largest comprehensive schools in Nottingham.

While teaching in Nottingham, Hirst stumbled upon a newspaper advertisement for art teachers willing to teach in Africa.

The choice was between Ghana and Kenya.

In 1965, Hirst moved to Kenya where he was to spend the rest of his life.

Terry Hirst grew up in Brighton in southern England.

From an early age Hirst knew that he wanted to be an artist.

He was always drawing and every morning as he made the paper run in his neighbourhood he would read through all the cartoons in all the papers.

Fueled by a sense of adventure, Hirst left England in 1965 to assume a teaching position at The Kenya High School in Nairobi.

Part of the reason he took up the position in Kenya, Hirst says, was because of a returning settler who had told him about what a "terrible time" he had had in Kenya.

He had given Hirst a copy of Jomo Kenyatta's Facing Mount Kenya to show him what he had been through, but when Hirst read the book he says it "blew my mind...! It was about, not ways of having but ways of being and I couldn't even tell him that I loved it!"

Hirst's decision to go to Kenya rather than Ghana was also influenced by the fact that the Kenyan contract was for two years while the Ghanaian contract stipulated a five-year commitment.

To Hirst, five years sounded like it was too long.

At Kenya High School Hirst quickly proceeded to design a new art room, and with Peter Kareithi, the Inspector of Art at the Ministry of Education, he helped to develop "a new model of creative education."

Kenya needed a cadre of professionally trained art teachers for its expanding secondary schools and the five-year British model seemed like a "farce" in such a situation.

Hirst helped introduce a two year course with an emphasis on teaching learners the essentials on materials, concepts and technique.

Hirst was also a part-time lecturer at the University of Nairobi and working with Gregory Maloba, one of the few fully trained artists in Kenya at the time, he spearheaded the introduction of a three-year B.Ed Art Course.

The new system proved to be a success with the first generation of students to graduate producing outstanding work that was featured in the internationally distributed African Arts magazine.

In 1966, Hirst was "invited," as he puts it, by the Kenyan government to head art teacher-training at the Kenyatta University College.

There, again with Maloba, he helped establish the Fine Art Department.

Besides his teaching work, Hirst was also active in other areas of the art scene.

He became a founding member of the Paa Ya Paa Art Gallery where he met with "some of the most creative minds of the ‘independence’ generation."

He eventually contributed two one-man exhibitions of paintings at the Paa Ya Paa Gallery which both sold out.

Hirst had already started to draw as a freelance cartoonist for the Daily Nation newspaper, when Hillary Ng’weno invited him to illustrate his regular Monday satirical column "With a Light Touch."

In 1973, two years after he started his collaboration with Ng'weno, the idea for a satirical magazine based on one of the characters in Ng'weno's column was born.

Hirst and Ng'weno envisioned Joe as a magazine that would feature illustrated jokes, comic strips and short stories by local writers.

The character, Joe, Hirst explains, is "a survivor who has to laugh to keep from crying."

The purpose of the magazine itself "was to comment on the news and to socialise people into being urban... to build a multiplicity of relationships... friendly but not involved emotionally."

To help make Joe A. reality, Jonathan Kariara of Oxford University Press gave Hirst and Ng'weno "a room, a table and two chairs" so they could start work on the magazine.

When the first edition of Joe came out in 1973 it was an immediate success, and the magazine quickly built its circulation at home and abroad.

After a year, however, Ng’weno left to start the "Weekly Review," a political commentary magazine.

Joe meanwhile continued to grow more successful thanks to the popularity of comic strips such as Edward Gitau's "City Life" and Hirst's "The Good, The Bad, And The Ugali."

Short stories by writers like David Maillu, Meja Mwangi, Leonard Kibera and even Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who were well known in Kenya, also contributed to the popularity of the magazine.

At its peak, Joe's circulation reached 30,000 with copies going out as far as West Africa.

And that was how, one morning, while working at the Joe offices, Hirst looked up to see a young Frank Odoi, freshly arrived from Ghana, beaming down at him with the words, "I'm here. I have come from Ghana to join you."