Ghanian Artist Spotlight: Seth Clottey and Reflections Class

Seth Clottey introducing his painting philosophy

This past week I had the pleasure of attending another Eat and Paint event.  At these events, a well-known guest artist spends an evening with us, sharing his/her painting techniques on a small project.  This event featured Seth Clottey.  Seth graduated from Ghanatta College of Art.  He is a frequent traveler and has exhibited in West Africa, Europe, the United States and Japan.
Seth primarily paints landscapes and is most interested in the play of light on water and reflections.  The theme for our event was a wet city street.
Seth shared with us that when he begins to sketch a design for a new painting, he prefers to begin directly with a pallete knife. He said "pencils are limited," "I 'feel' it with the knife," "the knife allows me to get to the heart of it." A pencil would be too fiddly to be compatible with the gestural and impressionistic quality of his work.  After his initial discussion he allowed us to rough sketch a city scene from memory. 


Painting in oil by Seth Clottey

Next, we blocked in the sky with the pallete knife and then blended the strokes with paint brushes and created a wash for the 'wet' area of the canvas.  We followed this by sketching in suggestions of detail, such as cars, trees, stories of buildings and people.
At this point we took a break for our gourmet dinner.  Dinner consists of bite size gourmet items and drink of choice.  It is quite tasty with many different flavors.  The break is also a nice time to walk around and see how others are coming on their canvas.


Discussing how to block out your sketch in paint

We finished the evening creating highlights and reflections with the pallet knife and filling in some details with the brushes.  Seth's style of painting is quite different from my own work and it expanded my repertoire.  
A Unique Opportunity:  Seth is offering a short term artist in residence program.  In his vision an artist would come and stay with him for a time and he would share his techniques while you paint together.  If you are interested in more information, please contact him at (+233) 244 613 189 or at his gmail account, lyvnright.
There will be a second workshop available on October 4th.  Contact Eat and Paint for reservations.

my sketch and starting to fill in some details








break for dinner--delicious gourmet food



paintings in progress



my painting finished for the night



Painting in oil by Seth Clottey