Chaotic Happiness: In the Studio with Larry Otoo

Larry Otoo does not ease into a painting. He lifts a blank white canvas onto the easel in his courtyard, lines up his paint pots along the front step and puts the music on. Then he starts to move.

Many of you will know his work already. Larry is one of Ghana's foremost painters, and for decades his crowded, joyful scenes of musicians, dancers and markets have filled walls across Accra and abroad. What I wanted to see was how those paintings begin. So I went to his studio with a camera, a few questions and no plan beyond watching.

Listening with the brush

There is always music playing when Larry works, and it is not there for company. When I asked whether it shapes what goes onto the canvas, he did not hesitate.

"Yes, because unconsciously you are listening to the next notes that will be played. Sometimes you already know the music, so you anticipate the next crescendo, or whether the music is coming to an end."

Jazz is where it gets exciting. "You want to hear the instruments," he told me. "You say, oh, I forgot to put in the trumpet, just because the music reminded you there is a trumpet blowing." The strings on an old Chic or Sister Sledge record can send the brush somewhere new. "Music plays a big role in deciding what you put on the canvas."

A full length mirror stands beside the easel. When I asked how he uses it, his answer was simple: "Like when I'm dancing." He told me that when a figure needs a particular posture, he becomes his own model. He strikes the pose in front of the mirror, studies it, then carries it back to the canvas and paints it in.

A new palette

Collectors who know Larry for his bold primary colours may be surprised by this show. In the studio he was reaching for cerulean and Prussian blue softened with white, with flashes of pink, lilac and acid green. "I've moved from the primary colours," he said.

He starts straight in with paint on a bare canvas, and the figures arrive later. "From intuition," he explained, "I pick out the images that you see there."

The canvas I watched him begin that morning became Highlife, which now hangs in the show.

The village, the concert hall and the dance hall

When we talked, Larry described three places where music lives, and how differently each one feels.

"In the traditional setting, music is always accompanied with dancing," he said. It is a way of "paying homage to the ancestors" and of "showing their culture in a very colourful and vibrant way." "The traditional ones give you a sweaty atmosphere, where you enjoy yourself. You feel that, well, I went to this carnival and I was part of the carnival."

The concert hall is another world. "You look at the classicals, they are more like solemn, well rehearsed, sitting down, reading of musical notes. It's fine, but then at the end of it all, you go home a little bit in a quieter mood." You sit and take the music in, and "maybe one or two instruments might kindle your heart and make it jump. But apart from that, that's about all."

Let's Dance lives in the third place: the bar and the dance hall, with its "sort of camaraderie atmosphere" of music, drinking and friends meeting. That mix, he said, "gives you a very dense, chaotic atmosphere, which is depicted on the canvases with colourful, bright, striking colours." The crowding is deliberate. "I intentionally made the atmosphere chaotic because I want you to read the facial expressions," Larry told me, and to see "people's addiction to chaotic happiness."

Two works to look for in Let's Dance

Popcorn Rendezvous. A night out at its height. A waiter serves the table, bottles and bowls of popcorn crowd the foreground, a trumpet cuts across the scene, and one reveller has already gone down. "The idea is to portray the faces and the mood they are in," Larry said, "and then use the crowd in the background to show that we are approaching a certain crescendo, where at the end of it all we will have achieved what we came here to do: a rendezvous of enjoyment and musical satisfaction."

Brass Rehearsal. Larry's starting point here was Brass Construction, the early 80s band "where the instruments play a major role, and most of them are made of metal." So the palette is gold, silver, greys and whites, "to give you a feeling of purity, and wealth in music. You won't see the normal Larry Otoo primary colours." It was still unfinished when I visited, but he already knew where it was going: "I've already deciphered the type of movement that will complete the brass band atmosphere."

See it before 17 November

Let's Dance is on at TIGA Art Gallery until 17 November. Paintings like these need to be seen in person, close enough to follow the brushwork. That is where the music is.

TIGA Art Gallery, Crystal Homes, 4th Circular Road, Cantonments, Accra. Open daily, 11am to 7pm. Please ring the doorbell when you arrive.

Video by the TIGA media team: Emmanuel, Abubakar, Theo and Godwin.