SPARTANBURG, S.C. (AP) — Early on a school day sometime in 2014, a retired police cruiser pulled around to the loading dock at Dorman High School.
Strapped to the top of the Crown Victoria were a pair of giant canvases, paintings in progress for Ludovic Nkoth, who was trying, somewhat stealthily, to bring them to school for his senior AP art class.
His teacher, Robert Urban, watched, amused.
“(He) would see me coming in at 7 a.m., 8 a.m. with two canvases tied to the car, and he would be like, ‘What are you doing!?’” Nkoth recalled, laughing at the memory. “It’s a huge car, but the canvas can’t fit anywhere in the car or in the trunk.”
Fast-forward to the Spring of 2022: Nkoth is flying off to London, Paris and a couple cities in Italy for gallery openings and appearances, his finished canvases carefully packed and protected for the journey across the Atlantic.
Nkoth is considered a rising star in the contemporary art world, represented by galleries in Turin, Italy, London and Los Angeles.
His colorful, often oversized, works are in demand in the U.S., Europe and Asia. They evoke his life’s journey, across continents and cultures.
LUDOVIC NKOTH’S JOURNEY TO THE US
Ludovic Nkoth was born in 1994 in Cameroon in western Africa and moved to Spartanburg at the age of 13.
His first language was French, and he spent his first year in South Carolina learning enough English to attend middle school. Drawing was his way to interpret his new home and stay connected to Cameroon. Hip-hop was his soundtrack and helped him master his new language. Even now, he speaks with a somewhat lyrical inflection.
At Dorman, he played varsity soccer and studied music and art. He graduated in 2014 but stayed in Spartanburg to earn a degree in interdisciplinary studies at USC-Upstate.
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