Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Aghahowa.
Michael, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I remember watching cartoons as a kid and pausing the TV to look at the way a hand or a mouth was drawn in a specific position. Cartoons gave me life as an only child and I wanted to create my own cartoon so that other children would be as happy as I was while in front of the TV. I was always drawing families and caricatures of friends from my head and from life. In high school I was heavily involved with Raw Art Works in Lynn, and they introduced me to a bunch of new ways to create like painting, sculpture, observational drawing, and large-scale mural painting. I still wanted to make cartoons though.
My junior year in high school, I got a scholarship to participate in the 3-week Montserrat pre-college program where I took an animation class that taught me that I actually have little patience for the process of making drawings move, so I decided that once I hit college, I would be an illustrator that could make concept art for the animators. While in college, I took as many different classes as possible but there were a lot of illustration requirements so I couldn’t do too much. What my illustration teachers taught me early on was that illustration can be more than just a cartoon. They introduced me to illustrators like Winslow Homer, Jc Leyendecker, N.C Wyeth, and Norman Rockwell. I fell in love with the expressive qualities of painting, the messages and the emotions that artists were able to convey with a few seemingly effortless strokes. I went on to discover artists that I’m even more inspired by like Archibald Motley, Ernie Barnes, and Kerry James Marshall, who’s art reflects their neighborhoods and the people within them. Once I learned how to paint with the help of many teachers, I started to apply what I was already doing with my cartoons & turned that into painting.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I am a painter that uses acrylic, oil and found paper in my work. I think I create work that is asking people to be more empathetic and to possibly see another side other than the negative in another being. My work sends this message because I believe that a lot of problems in this world come from some sort of miscommunication. I’m often confused about why the world is the way it is & I use painting to question it all. Right now, my paintings are really about my experience as a human in this world interacting with other people and how my life in a contemporary setting relates to my older peers and their life. I want people to look at my work and question it, and form ideas about it. Hopefully it will start a conversation that’ll lead to some sort of common ground.
Do current events, local or global, affect your work and what you are focused on?
I think that the role of an artist will never change because there’s never been a revolution that art hasn’t been a part of. I believe that if we live long enough, we can achieve some sort of world peace, and with everything going on in the world today, it’s hard to tackle everything as an artist. There are some things I believe that I can’t speak on, but in my work all I’m asking for is love and compassion, and I think that if we focus on those things a lot can change.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
– Follow me on Instagram @_aghahowa
– Check out my website at aghahowa.com
I’m also a Siir artist so follow that Instagram @siirart17
– Check out our website at siirart.com
Contact Info:
- Website: aghahowa.com
- Email: michaelaghahowa@gmail.com
- Instagram: _aghahowa
Image Credit:
The flower painting’s title is ” A Relic’s Glow”
The yellow portrait of the black man dressed like a clown is Titled, “Not Me”
The painting with the two kids in a wagon, surrounded by legs is titled, ‘For Eli”
The family at the dinner table’s title is “Grown Folks Business”
The two black and white ink drawings are drawings from my senior year in high school (2013)
the one with the man giving his heart is a self portrait & the other one is an observation, both are untitled. I just thought I’d show you them for reference to what I’m talking about in the short bio.
Getting in touch: BostonVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
