The emerging contemporary Ghanaian artist Kwesi Botchway documents the contemporary African culture through paintings of portraiture using mixed mediums acrylic and oil on canvas.

Botchway’s paintings, charged with emotions, highlights the idea of beauty in relation to the black experience. Color plays an important role in the work of Botchway expressing one’s character, community, culture and even language. The color of the black skin includes purple hues, evoking the ancient color which has been linked to royalty wealth, grandeur, and also mystery, magic, seduction and wisdom. These emotionally charged portraits are presented on bright colored backgrounds that emphasizes the people in question. The spectator is being challenged directly by the subject of the paintings, creating an intriguing dialogue between the subject and the viewer. Through Botchway’s choice of representation, the viewer becomes emotionally invested in the subject’s story. While some of his personas are inspired by people around him, other characters were born from his imagination. The source of emotion is also inherent from the vivacious colors creating a connection between the viewer and the painting. Additionally, his subject matter depicts black people in everyday situations inspired by socio-political events around the world, with a strong desire to elevate the community of minorities. His latest creation is about the black lives matter movement and the protests that followed. 

Through his paintings, Botchway tries to rewrite the history of art leaving an important place for the African culture. In a way, the artist critics the colonial history of portraiture, and the relegation of the Black subject to scenes of labor and slavery, diverting this situation in his paintings to put Black presence center stage. These creations in a way combine local with global, indigenous with diaspora and traditional with contemporary. Botchway’s inspiration and influence come from 19th century French Impressionism and his appreciation of African social realism today.

Some of his works are reminiscent of art history classics such as Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. In Green Fluffy Coat (all works, 2020) the woman strikes almost the same pose as the girl in Vermeer’s version, but the very light skin is replaced by ebony skin and the pearl by a chandelier-style earring.

Botchway plays with tropes of the European arts canon, reimagining existing art historical or political narratives. He takes up Classical poses for his personas playing with different styles and cultures, inducing a sense of curiosity amongst the viewers about the subject’s story behind the painting.