I use blue in my paintings to advocate for unity and harmony, bridge the gap between different skin tones, and address the issues of racism.
Samuel Oseigyei Kumah’s paintings propose a radical simplicity: beneath surface difference, humanity is shared. Rendering his figures in saturated shades of blue, Kumah deliberately departs from naturalistic skin tone to dissolve racial coding and redirect attention toward emotion, presence, and relational intimacy. Blue, in his work, is not absence—it is convergence: a chromatic space where difference yields to commonality.
Trained at the Ghanatta College of Arts and Design after years of informal apprenticeship, Kumah brings technical discipline to compositions that remain emotionally direct. His figures often occupy shallow, uncluttered spaces—standing alone, paired in quiet connection, or gathered beneath umbrellas that function as both literal shelter and symbolic threshold. These scenes are not theatrical; they are deliberate pauses. Gesture, posture, and gaze carry meaning more than narrative detail.
Across the work, umbrellas recur as emblems of protection, unity, and shared vulnerability. Couples lean into one another; solitary figures face outward with composure rather than defiance. The paintings resist spectacle in favor of clarity. By limiting chromatic range and foregrounding form, Kumah creates images that are immediately legible yet conceptually insistent.
Kumah’s practice is driven by a commitment to social harmony. Addressing racism, discrimination, and injustice without illustration or accusation, his work operates through substitution: blue bodies in place of racialized ones, intimacy in place of conflict, stillness in place of rupture. The result is a visual language that advocates equality not as a slogan, but as a lived condition—quiet, resolute, and human.