Kehinde Wiley

Artist Kehinde Wiley was born and grew up in Los Angeles, California.  

He was one of six children. When Wiley was a child, his mother recognized his artistic talent and enrolled him and his twin brother in after-school art classes at the age of 11. "So we were on buses doing five-hour round trips every weekend to go study art which was challenging and he sometimes saw as a "pain...".   My brother ended up in love with medicine and literature and business - he's in real estate and finance now. But me, I really got the art bug."

At the age of 12, in 1989, Wiley was one of 50 American children who went to live in Russia where he studied art and the Russian language.

His experiences growing up as a young black man in the United States would strongly influence his artistic career. He says, "I know how young black men are seen."

Wiley graduated from the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, where he had the opportunity to travel to several Los Angeles galleries.

He earned his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and MFA at Yale University School of Art. While at art school, he says that the most important lesson he learned was to create art that he wanted to make, not art that his professors wanted him to make.
                                           

Portraits of young, African American men rendered in the style of the old masters 

Wiley has recently had the honor of being selected by President Barack Obama to paint his presidential portrait which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. 

“I think my life has been transformed by the ability to take things that exist in the world and look at them more closely. I think that’s what art does at its best: it allows us to slow down,”

Do you ever see yourself reflected in art?
How do you represent yourself in your art?

*Kehinde Wiley has an exhibit at the St. Louis Art Museum featuring portraits of people who live in St. Louis.  This exhibit is free and closes in a short time on February 10.  See if your grownups will take you!

https://artclasscurator.com/kehinde-wiley-art-lesson/
https://www.theartstory.org/artist-wiley-kehinde-life-and-legacy.htm