A 1-year-old in Ghana has been recognized by Guinness World Records as the youngest male artist in the world, after exhibiting his artworks and making a sale.
Ace-Liam Nana Sam Ankrah began painting by crawling through paint on a canvas at 6 months old, and became the world's youngest male artist at just 1 year and 152 days old.
"While learning to crawl, I spread out a piece of unstretched canvas on the floor and dropped some paint on it as a way to keep him busy while I worked on a commission painting," his mother Chantelle, who is an artist herself, told Guinness World Records.
"He [...] ended up spreading the paint all over the canvas, and in the process he created his first masterpiece titled 'The crawl'," she said. "It was clear that he found a lot of joy in it."
Now standing on his own two feet, Ace-Liam has since created more than 20 paintings. He showed 10 of his paintings in his first group exhibition, The Soundout Premium Exhibition at the Museum of Science and Technology in Accra. Nine of them were sold.
Chantelle said that ever since Ace-Liam began talking, he's been asking to paint.
"It's a fun and creative outlet for him, and he enjoys the freedom to explore and create without limitations," she said.
In order to qualify, along with showing and selling his artwork, there needed to be evidence that Ace-Liam painted the works himself. Although his mom helps set up his painting station and opens the paint bottles for him, he chooses the canvas size he wants to use, and the colors, and paints the work himself.
"A painting session can last anywhere from a few minutes to about half an hour, depending on his interest at the moment," Chantelle said. "Sometimes he leaves a painting and comes back to it after a couple of days to finish it. Once he's done, he says 'mama finish'."
--with reporting by TMX
