ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — Meet Ace-Liam Ankrah, a toddler from Ghana who set the record as the world’s youngest male artist.
His mother, Chantelle Kukua Eghan, says it all started by chance when her then six-month-old son discovered her acrylic paints.
Eghan, an artist and founder of Arts and Cocktails Studio, a bar in Ghana’s capital Accra that offers painting lessons, said she was looking for a way to keep her son busy while she worked on her own paintings.
“I laid out a canvas on the floor and put paint on it, and then as he crawled he spread all the paint on the canvas,” she said.
And so his first work of art, “The Crawl,” was born, Eghan, 25, told the Associated Press.
Afterwards, Ace-Liam continued painting at his mother’s urging.
Eghan decided to apply for the record last June. In November, Guinness World Records informed her that in order to break a previous record, her son would have to exhibit and sell paintings.
She arranged Ace-Liam’s first exhibition at the Museum of Science and Technology in Accra in January, where nine out of ten of his works were sold. She declined to say at what price the paintings were sold.
They were on their way.
Guinness World Records subsequently confirmed the record in a statement, declaring last week that “little Ace-Liam Nana Sam Ankrah from Ghana is the world’s youngest male recording artist at the age of 1 year and 152 days.”
Guinness World Records did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment on the youngest male artist record to date.
The overall record for the youngest artist in the world is currently held by India’s Arushi Bhatnagar. She had her first exhibition at the age of 11 months and sold her first painting for 5,000 rupees ($60) in 2003.
Ace-Liam, who turns two in July, still loves painting and eagerly accompanies his mother to her studio, where a corner has been set up just for him. He sometimes paints in just five-minute sessions and then returns to the same canvas over several days or weeks, Eghan says.
Recently he was seen running excitedly around the studio, with the bursts of energy typical of boys his age. But he was also very focused and concentrated while painting for nearly an hour – choosing green, yellow and blue for his latest work, rubbing the oil paints into the canvas with his tiny fingers.
Eghan says the world record holder hasn’t changed her life. She won’t sell The Crawl, but she wants it to stay in the family.
She added that she hopes the media attention her son receives can encourage and inspire other parents to discover and nurture their children’s talents.
“He paints, grows and plays throughout the process,” she says.
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AP Africa News: https://apnews.com/hub/africa
Francis Kokutse, Associated Press
