Junkscape I

Ablade Glover’s vibrant canvases reveal both his sharp eye for detail and his abiding passion to capture the fleeting, everchanging moments of the world around him. Warm pigments, deftly applied with a palette knife, are built into thick layers of impastoed paint that seem to reflect the shimmering heat of Ghana’s capital city. Indeed, Accra’s bustling marketplaces, teeming beaches, animated bus stations, crowded thoroughfares and brightly attired crowds are the sole and central subject of this nearly nonagenarian artist, who has painted its many changing faces since he was a boy. These exuberant paintings reveal animated landscapes that mirror the diversity of the country’s many peoples, all mingling and moving together through these energetic urban spaces. Glover’s interest in textiles has caused some commentators to draw comparisons between his intensely coloured canvases and the gleaming Kente cloths for which Ghana is justly renowned.
Ablade Glover’s artistic talent was noticed by the wife of W.E. DuBois, who became his patron and arranged with Kwame Nkrumah that he be given a scholarship to study abroad. He first trained at the (then) Central School of Art in London, before further studies at Newcastle University in the early 60s, where he first began to use the palette knife. Post-graduate studies followed, in America, culminating in his PhD from Kent State University. Glover’s chosen ‘oil on canvas’ style is entirely steeped in the European modernist tradition. But, it is the unexpected encounter of style and subject, a semi-abstract modernist approach to portraying the African world, that so distinguishes his unique canvases. Junkscape I depicts an urban wasteland stretching towards the horizon. Seen close up, the canvas is entirely abstract, but, moving further away, a perspective point arrives when abstract daubs of paint flicker into focus and human figures appear, picking over the mound in search of objects that retain value because they can still be found new functions, given new life.
Ablade Glover was born in Accra, Ghana in 1934. Returning from overseas study, he became an educator first, teaching Art and Material Studies at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, where he rose to the position of Dean of the Art Faculty. In 1994, he retired to focus on painting full-time, and created The Artists Alliance Gallery in Accra, an artist-led gallery dedicated to focusing attention on contemporary African art and its traditional roots. Glover is a recipient of the AFGRAD Alumni Award by the African-American Institute, New York. He is a Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Art in London. His work is in the permanent collections of the Imperial Palace Collection, Tokyo; UNESCO Headquarters, Paris; Africa First Collection, Tel Aviv; and a major mural is on permanent public display at O’Hare International Airport, Chicago, USA. Ablade Glover is represented by October Gallery, London.