Navei, N. (2022). Visual arts and environmental conservation in Ghana: A case study of selected paintings of Ablade Glover

Environmental art remains one of the suitable advocacy strategies to ensure the preservation and conservation of the natural environment for human posterity due to its effective awareness creation. It is against this backdrop that the pioneering contemporary Ghanaian Visual artists and their succeeding generation of artists have produced several Visual artworks for the promotion of environmental conservation in Ghana. However, their efforts have remained largely undocumented and could be misconstrued. This qualitative case study sought to aesthetically reveal the immense contributions of selected paintings of Ablade Glover toward environmental conservation in Ghana. Five paintings of Ablade Glover namely; Accra Floods, Slumscape, Sunrise, Red Forest, and Forest were purposively sampled with data collected through semi-structured interviews and unstructured observation. The study, through visual and descriptive analyses, found that the five aestheticised paintings of Ablade Glover are environmentally related advocacy-artefacts that seek to (re)create the awareness of city dwellers, urban planning authorities, and agencies about: the deadly seasonal disasters (floods) in Ghanaian cities (Accra); the presence of slums and their associated insanitary/health issues in Ghanaian cities (Accra), and other human unfriendly acts toward the natural environment. While Glover is encouraged to produce more of such environmentally-related paintings, the study recommends further aesthetical studies to be conducted on similar environmentally-related Visual Arts produced by Ghanaian Visual artists to decode their intended advocacy meanings to city dwellers, urban planning authorities, and the entirety of the Ghanaian populace. This stands to minimise and/or avert the seasonal floods in Ghanaian cities (Accra); deal with slums and their insanitary issues in Ghanaian cities (Accra) and generally protect the natural environment for posterity.