Portia Zvavahera was born in Juru, Zimbabwe. She currently lives and works in Harare. Between 2003 and 2005 she studied at the National Gallery BAT Workshop School (now the National Gallery School of Visual Art and Design) and in 2006 she obtained a Diploma in Visual Arts from Harare Polytechnic. Using oil-based printing ink and oil bar on canvas, Zvavahera’s cathartic, large-scale paintings create thin (albeit layered) films between the worlds of dream and memory. The protagonists of her dreams are spiritual and ethereal renditions of mostly female figures. Zvavahera explains that the spirituality embodied in her dreamscapes refers to individual and communal rituals — a blend of indigenous and Afro-Apostolic sects of Zimbabwean beliefs and Christianity that are reflective of her cultural upbringing. Rising up, the central figure in many of Zvavahera’s paintings is surrounded by an aura of radiating lines – sometimes a delicately printed pattern resembling crochet or lacework, at other times a fluttering of expressive gestures – that suggests a protective veil, a guiding influence that embraces and elevates.