Born 1969. Also known as Samuel Arts. First generation apprentice of seminal, Golden Age, master poster painter Joe Mensah, his uncle. Actively painted movie posters from the early to mid/late 1990s. Loves blue everything, from hair highlights to backgrounds to fur, guns, and ruffled clothing. Imagery often conveys a distorted naturalism. Loves fire. Paints molten lava spitting hydrangeas of fire, for effect alone. Nearly all posters painted on two-bag, large-scale format. Never a gentle countenance painted by Samuel—there’s angst in every face he paints. His control of detail can extend all the way from the micro depiction of faces on paper currency to the wispy smoke outline highlights he often adds to his figures. Shares his Uncle Joe’s passion for overt muscularity. not too concerned about verisimilitude between actions in the movie and his creative representation.

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

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: Extreme Canvas, Center for African American Culture, Pittsburgh, PA

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

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

2016: Kung Fu in Africa: Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana (1985-1999), Hanart TZ, Hong Kong 

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

2017 – 2018 Lingnan Hung Kuen Across the Century: Kung Fu Narratives in Cinema and Community, Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre, Hong Kong; City University of Hong Kong; Art Lab, Lausanne, Switzerland

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

2000: Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine, Ernie Wolfe III, Nov/Dec 2000, pages 44-51 

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

2009: African Arts, Volume 42, number 3, 20, Autumn 2009, “The Radiance of the King”, Don Cosentino

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