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Anita-Pearl Ankor
Anita-Pearl Mwinnabang Ankor, from Nandom in northern Ghana, grew up in Accra and studied not painting but agricultural science: her specialism at the University of Ghana was post-harvest technology. She began drawing in pencil in her final year and painting professionally in 2015. In 2019 a video of her painting a wall went viral on social media.
Biography
The wider public first met Ankor, a painter and muralist, through a short clip posted on her Instagram page in 2019. In it she paints a wall herself. The video spread across social media, and she has been known ever since as “The Female Painter”, a nickname that has stuck.
She comes from Nandom in the Upper West Region of Ghana but grew up in the capital, Accra. She went to University Primary and Junior High School, and finished secondary school at Mfantsiman Girls’ Secondary School. In 2011 she entered the University of Ghana, where she studied agricultural science and specialised in post-harvest technology, the handling and storage of crops after harvesting. None of this had anything to do with art. Pencil drawing and painting began as a hobby in her fourth year. After graduating, Ankor did her national service (the compulsory post-university placement in Ghana) at Swedru, a town where, it seems, she also worked in those months in her main field. She dates her career in painting from 2015: the push came from the work of a painter she happened to see. I have not been able to establish that person’s name.
She founded and runs an art company, NYTAZ Arts. Its stated specialisation is quite practical: murals, pencil art, interior and exterior painting.
In her case the line between decorative work for clients and independent art is not drawn sharply, and it seems to me that the 2019 clip showed exactly this process: a person at work on a wall, and the viewer interested in the work itself.
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