“My father is Nigerian; my mother is from Texas and African-American. My father was the first in his family to go to university. He flew from Nigeria to Los Angeles in the '70s to go to UCLA, where he met my mother. They broke up before I was born, and he returned to Nigeria.”

American portrait painter

Kehinde Wiley is an American portrait painter based in New York City. He is known for paintings of Black subjects that rework the language of Old Master portraiture, placing contemporary figures within a tradition usually reserved for power and authority. In 2017, Wiley was commissioned to paint former U.S. President Barack Obama’s portrait for the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. The Columbus Museum of Art hosted an exhibition of his work in 2007 and described his paintings as heroic portraits that address the image and status of young African-American men in contemporary culture.