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- [Otis] When you are painting a portrait of a person
it's important that you represent the person well.
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You also have to show the person's emotions and expressions.
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The image must look powerful enough to motivate somebody
to feel confidence in themselves.
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That's why I like them to be like staring at you
in a way that you would just stop everything you're doing
and just look straight to them.
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My name is Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe,
I paint and I draw.
So in general, I'm an artist.
(chuckles)
(camera clicking)
My painting usually starts with photo sessions.
Most of my models I find
are mostly in restaurants, people that I meet
when I walk around.
(camera clicking)
This one.
I give them clothes to wear sometimes
because that's my way of adding my idea to it.
Then kind of like look away.
The most important thing
is me capturing their expression,
their emotion, their character.
I'm working on a cowboy series.
Because I grew up in Ghana
watching a lot of Western movies
a lot of action movies and a lot of cowboy movies.
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I take a long time when I'm sketching, yeah.
Because that's where I decide
what to add, what to take out.
There are multiple ideas in my head.
And then when you apply it
and you come back and look at it
and you think it doesn't work
you move on to the next idea.
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It always changes at the end of it all.
Then I start painting.
When I'm painting the skin tones,
I work on different shade of blacks and whites.
Just adding the greens, adding the reds.
Even though I'm black, I'm not just black.
There are a lot of reflections from outside
that falls on the skin.
- [Grace] One of the things I really feel
in looking at Otis's painting is
he really honors the subjects.
Often times they're friends
or people that he's kind of fascinated with.
And he really portrays his portraits
in a very humane way.
The textures of the clothing
and then the dimensions of the figures themselves.
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- [Otis] It always goes back to the old masters.
Because we see the paintings
and all these people are very powerful people.
There were a lot of black people that were also powerful
but I never see paintings of them.
So, for me as an artist and somebody who is in this era,
I feel it's a way of correcting that.
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It was just my way of sort of rewriting history.
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We also tell our own stories on how we wanted to be seen.
Color is important.
It just shouldn't be something that
is just a beautiful color that is there.
It should go with the character of the person I would say.
So when you see the painting,
everything just flows through.
You see the pose of the person
and you see the color.
It's like, it just flows well.
I grew up in Accra, Ghana, West Africa.
I'm the fourth born of six children.
When I started going to the movie theaters
and watching movies,
all the movie posters were hand-painted,
which struck me
as very, very amazing.
So, I suddenly felt like I wanted to do this.
I wanted to paint.
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When I was in my early 20's,
I started Ghanatta College of Art and Design,
where I schooled for four years.
I moved to Portland three years ago.
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I try to put in a little bit of
how we dress back home.
It can be clothes,
it can be the room settings.
Cause I always like to tell the story
from the African side and then the African-American side
put them together and tell that story.
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Last year, I got a show
at the Roberts Projects at Los Angeles.
The name of my show was "Black Like Me."
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That show was one of the best shows
that I've really done in my life.
There were a lot of famous people
that I'd never thought I would see.
Talking to me how they appreciate my work
and they're looking forward to more stuff
that I'll be doing the future.
The show got a lot of attention.
Sometimes when I sit down and think about it,
it's so unreal, but it's still happening.
It was a nice experience.
You just have to enjoy the moment
because you work for it and then
it's really fun when people appreciate what you created.
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- [Grace] Otis hasn't given into this sort of fame.
He is through and through a painter,
who just wants to be in the studio
and get his thoughts out and get the work done.
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- [Otis] I have big shows coming up.
And then I have also a group show coming up in Shanghai
and a group show also in LA
and a couple of ones that I can't really talk about yet.
And it's gonna be big.
(chuckles)
It's like, am I prepared for this?
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What do I see for my future?
You cannot predict the future
but you can always be prepared for it.
I live in the moment.
I work and try to be better than yesterday or today.
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