About THE ARTIST

Munir D. Mohammed is a native of Ghana, West Africa. He was born in Kumasi the second largest city in Ghana and as a child he was not encouraged to draw or paint. Mohammed said his first medium of artistic expression was neither pencil, pen-and-ink nor oils; it was sand. With his finger he drew pictures in the sand before he was sent to grade school where he was introduced to chalk, pencils and crayons.

After graduating from Ghanatta College of Art where he received his Bachelor of Fine Art degree, he took a job designing and painting billboards by hand with a commercial art company. In 1979 he opened his own studio in Accra, Ghana painting general subjects from the villages, towns to cities. As a figurative and a landscape artist he has demonstrated his knowledge of composition, balance and the human figure. He received commissions painting portraits of several West African heads of state including presidents and prominent people. In 1981 he moved his studio to Freetown, Sierra Leone – West Africa and lived there for seven years.

In 1988 he moved to the United States, he had participated in over 35 individual and group shows and painted more than 25 community and school setting murals. In 1996 he co-founded The International Gallery for Heritage and Culture. He is the Artistic Director and has supervised an average of 35 AmeriCorps artists per year, providing art and cultural education programs in schools and in the community. In 1999, he received his Master of Arts Degree (MA) from Rhode Island School of Design. 

In 2010-13, he taught a Mural Design Course at Rhode Island College and Drawing class at University of Rhode Island at Providence Campus. Additionally, he designed and painted with Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council a mural over sixty-five feet long, as well as murals for CODAC, and Oasis International. In 2012, he designed and painted a mural at Rhode Island College with his students. Also, he completed a mural for the entrance of Woonasquatucket River Bike Pathway and another mural at the Corner of Rodman and South Main Street in Fall River, Massachusetts. Also in 2013, the largest Mural he ever painted was for Rhode Island Transportation Authority’s Highway Beautification Project -   Exit 29 (at the S-curve) on 95 North in Pawtucket.

Today, he is still active in his studio, Artistic Director of the International Gallery for Heritage and Culture, and muralist in residence at William Davies Career Technical High School in Lincoln; under RISD Project Open Door Program.