Lord Ohene Okyerebour
b. 1990, Ghana
Lord Ohene Okyere-Bour is an Amsterdam-based Ghanaian painter born in the Ashanti Region of Ghana, West Africa. He focuses his practice in portraiture, figurative, and life painting. Ohene lived in Accra and later moved to Amsterdam to pursue his art career. Like many other Ghanaian artists, he is a product of the prestigious Ghanatta College or Art and Design. Combining figurative and portraiture skills and techniques, Ohene has developed his own unique style of bold stunning portraits.
Ohene is drawn to people who may look familiar, invoke a past relation, or summon an ancestral connection. By sharing stories and bringing people together he creates a hybrid community, grounding self-portraiture in kinship and fostering a rooted sense of convivial connection that many of us are yearning for more. The representations are also steeped in imaginative possibility, stemming from his experience in set design. Just like the movies, Lord Ohene’s paintings communicate as surreal landscapes where he can test out different styles, discover past stories, and spark new conversations. Rather than depict exactly what he sees, the artist tries to see deep into someone’s soul, capture their truth, and dream what it can become. He may change the pattern of their clothes, subtle gestures in their pose, a symbolic object in their midst, using a directorial agency to build new scenes and dialogues.