Born 1971. First generation apprentice of Joe Mensah. A lifer in the school of where-details-matter. Often obsessive about definition in depiction of muscles. Uses horizontal bifurcation of vertical format with color fields as background divider. Follows Joe Mensah’s nod toward multi-colored coiffeurs. Another advocate of stern-faced protagonists. Actively popping popcorn-form fire is his specialty. Excels at skeuomorphic Chinese character representation. He’s at his best when he over-packs seemingly unrelated imagery into his poster paintings. Still a sought-after sign writer; painted movie posters throughout the 1990s, quitting only after the market for hand-painted posters dried up before the millennium because of competition from the machine-made and offset printed replacements. Not an especially prolific movie poster painter.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:

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

2003: Seven from Ghana, Sundance Film Festival, Park City, UT January 2003

2003: Outrageous Supercharge: Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA

 2004: Africa Screams, Iwalewa-Haus Afrikazentrum der Universitat Bayreuth, 2004

Traveled to Vienna November 2004 – February 2005

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

2008: “Extreme Canvas: Hand Painted Movie Posters from Ghana”, ArcLight Cinemas 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

2003  New York Times Magazine, “Why We Love Fashion? It’s Universal; Planet Ghana”, Ernie Wolfe III, February 23, 2003

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