Jeremiah Quarshie

Jeremiah Quarshie was born in 1977 in Ghana and is based in Accra. His figurative painting practice engages with the lives and experiences of Ghanaians across generations and social positions, producing portraits and narrative scenes that combine careful observation with a distinctive chromatic sensibility. His paintings are marked by their warmth and psychological attentiveness: his subjects — family members, community members, historical figures — are rendered with specificity and placed within particular social and emotional contexts.

Quarshie draws on a range of influences, from the Dutch and Flemish traditions of portraiture and genre painting to West African visual cultures. His canvases have a dense, luminous quality, with carefully controlled light that models form and creates psychological depth. He is interested in the everyday as a site of beauty and dignity: domestic scenes, informal gatherings, children at play. The works are rooted in observation and in the textures of daily life in Accra, building a sustained pictorial record of Ghanaian social experience.

Quarshie has exhibited extensively in Ghana and across the African continent. He has shown at the Dak'Art Biennale in Dakar, had a solo show Memories of Yellow: A Game of Power & Chance at Gallery 1957 (2025). He was part of When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration Painting at Zeitz MOCAA and Kunst Museum Basel, curated by Koyo Kouoh and Tandzani Dhlakama.