ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — Meet Ace Liam Ankrah, the Ghanaian toddler who has broken records as the world’s youngest male artist.
His mother, Chantelle Kukua Egun, said it all started when her son, who was just six months old at the time, accidentally discovered her acrylic paints.
Egun, an artist and founder of Arts and Cocktails Studio, a bar that also offers art classes in Ghana’s capital, Accra, said she was looking for a way to keep her son busy while she continued to paint her own pictures.
“I laid the canvas out on the floor and painted it, and my son crawled around and got all the color on the canvas,” she said.
And so his first film, “The Crawl,” was born, Egan, 25, told The Associated Press.
After that, encouraged by his mother, Ace Liam continued to paint.
Ms Egan decided to submit her entry for the record in June last year, and in November Guinness World Records told her that her son would need to exhibit and sell the painting to beat the previous record.
She organized Ace Ream’s first exhibition at the Science and Technology Museum in Accra in January, and nine of the 10 works on show were sold. She declined to disclose how much the paintings sold for.
They were on their way out.
after that, The record was recognized by Guinness World Records In a statement, it declared last week that “little Ace Liam Nana Sam Ankrah from Ghana is the world’s youngest male artiste at 1 year and 152 days old.”
Guinness World Records did not immediately respond to an Associated Press inquiry about the youngest male artist to ever hold the record.
The current overall record for the world’s youngest artist is held by Arushi Bhatnagar of India, who had her first exhibition at 11 months old and sold her first painting in 2003 for 5,000 rupees ($60).
Ace-Liam, who turns two in July, still loves to draw and happily accompanies him to his mum’s studio, where he has his own corner dedicated to him. Egan says Ace-Liam will sometimes paint in five-minute sessions, and sometimes return to the same canvas for days or weeks.
The other day, he was running excitedly around the studio — the kind of bursts of energy common to boys his age — but he was also hyper-focused and focused for almost an hour while he painted, his tiny fingers rubbing oil paint onto the canvas, choosing greens, yellows and blues for his latest work in progress.
Egan says being a world record holder hasn’t changed his life and he has no plans to sell “The Crawl,” but will keep it in the family.
She added that she hopes the media attention her son has received will encourage and inspire other parents to discover and nurture their children’s talents.
“He’s drawing and growing and playing throughout the entire process,” she says.
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