"As an artist, I made my stamp by telling my truth."
Oluwole Omofemi (b. 1988, Ibadan, Nigeria) is one of the most internationally visible Nigerian painters of his generation. His portraits in oil and acrylic celebrate Black beauty, dignity and Afrocentric pride, with the monumental Afro hair of his subjects rising like a crown against vivid, pop-inflected backgrounds: for Omofemi, hair is the symbol of identity. Trained at The Polytechnic, Ibadan, after a childhood spent hawking beer to buy drawing books, he rose from the Dugbe Market district to the galleries of London, Barcelona and New York. In 2022 Tatler commissioned him to paint Queen Elizabeth II for her Platinum Jubilee, the last commissioned portrait of the monarch, exhibited by Sotheby's alongside Warhol's Reigning Queens. He lives and works in Ibadan.