“I learned to paint all on my own. One day I saw that the cinema business was using very small pictures. My first attempt for a canvas poster was in 1985 for a film named Five for Hell. It was good because it attracted so many people. This was how it all started.”

— Alex Nkrumah Boateng, Extreme Canvas 2 (2012) by Ernie Wolfe III, pg. 53

Born 1954. Probably the first hand to be identified with movie poster painting in Ghana. Created posters for brick and mortar colonial era movie theaters concurrently with the introduction of mobile cinema, circa mid 1980s. Pinking sheared edges a signature element of this early work. Specialized in small one-bag size commercial canvas format from the mid 1980s until mid 1990s. Beginning in 1993, utilized a much larger flour sack based two-bag format. By any measure, a talented, technical painter who can tackle a tricky proto-3D perspective. Capable of excruciatingly detailed depictions, he is a baron of naturalistic expression within the tradition. Loves micro-detail like painting scales, hair, blood, and blades of grass. Equally adept with large and small formats. Can do it all. Muscles and fire and action, oh my! Melds micro and macro detail effectively. Confident. Jovial yet very independent and resolute about his ideas. Skillfully executes praise portrait representations of known Western celebrities. Not exactly prolific, but actively painted movie posters throughout the entire Golden Age, circa 1986-1998.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:

1993: Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles

1996: Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Bergamot Station, Santa Monica

1999: Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles

2001: Death-Stalking Sleep-Walking Barbarian Ninja Terminators: Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA, Los Angeles, (voted best exhibition of 2001 by LA Weekly)

2001 – 2002: Extreme Canvas: Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles

2001: “Extreme Canvas”, Cavin Morris Gallery, New York, NY September 2001

2006: Serpents, Mermaids and Action Heroes, Parkland College Art Gallery, Champaign, IL

2007: “Black Like We”, Feldman-Horn Gallery, Harvard-Westlake School, North Hollywood, CA

2009: “Out of Africa: Obama and McCain Praise Portraits and Visual Narratives”, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles; Reviewed in the Los Angeles Times on May 21, 1999, by art critic David Pagel

2009: “No This Is It: Michael Jackson, 25 Years of Praise Portraits”, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles

2012: “Michael Jackson in the After-Life: Praise Portraits and Commentary Paintings from Ghana”, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles

2013: Wow Women, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles

2013: The Horror The Horror!, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, curated by Brandon Boyd

2013: “Viva Mandela!”, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles

2014: Knock Off – Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, Orange, CA

2014: “Ghana Pop”, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles

2014: Continental Convergence: Hand-Painted Martial Arts Posters from Ghana, Mandarin Plaza, Chinatown, Los Angeles

2017 - 2018: Ghana Paints Hollywood: Hand Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT curated by Ernie Wolfe III

2019 – 2020, Baptized by Beefcake: The Golden Age of Hand Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Poster House, New York, NY co-curated by Ernie Wolfe III and Angelina Lippert

PUBLICATIONS:

2000: Extreme Canvas: Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Ernie Wolfe III, Dilettante Press, 2000

2012: Extreme Canvas 2: The Golden Age of Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Ernie Wolfe III, Kesho/Malaika Press, 2012