[dropcap custom_class=”normal”]Nii Hylton is a Ghanaian painter who left his home country to pursue a career in art in the year 2004. He studied Graphic Design and Painting at the Ghanatta College of Art and Design, and later went on to attend the Truman State University in Missouri, United States where he studied Visual Communication. Although Nii has been developing his craft in Black art paintings before leaving for the United state.[/dropcap]
He won the President’s Honorary Scholarship Award in Academic Excellence and the Art Assistance Scholarship for his skills as an artist in his his first year at the University.
Nii Hylton style of painting is both traditional and contemporary through subjects that are cultural and social, using a palette knife for texture. His realism and abstraction are combined with acrylic and oil pastel on canvas.
Talking about influences to his work, Nii says his paintings focuses on Africa, and what’s going through his mind at that moment. His paintings captures the traditional scenes of African villages and often depict people dancing or playing music. In one painting, “At Sea,” men in a boat are caught in a violent storm. The painting shows what is believed to happen in Ghana if fishermen break a taboo started during the days of the slave trade after a ship full of human cargo sank in a storm on a Tuesday. If you fish on Tuesdays in Ghana, you risk facing the spirits of those people out on the water, Nii said.
Place of Birth: Akuse, Ghana
Date of Birth: 1978
Nii Hylton paintings have featured in a number of solo and group art exhibitions:
Art Exhibition 2011 – Civico, Guadalajara, Spain – 2011
December 2010 Art Exhibition – Madrid, Spain – 2010
September 2010 Art Exhibition, ArtBar, La Latina, Madrid, Spain – 2010
Painting Exhibition, Gutemburg, Alcalá De Henares, Guadalajara, Spain – 2010
Painting Exhibition, Metropolis Cafe, Guadalajara, Spain – 2009
African paintings, Washington Street Java Co, Kirksville, Missouri, USA – 2006
His paintings are full of texture and color, something with which he enjoys experimenting, such as using a palette knife for texture or painting on velvet. His long-term goal is to open Hylton Gallery in a larger city such as Chicago.
Photo credit: True African Art.com
References
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2007/sep/20070930ovat017.asp
http://www.trueafricanart.com/african-artists/nii-hylton.html
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