Prince William, a King-in-waiting: Tatler’s June issue celebrates the Prince of Wales with a spectacular new portrait by Oluwole Omofemi
In 1988, the year that Omofemi was born, Nigeria was seven years away from being kicked out of the Commonwealth for human rights abuses. It was, back then, a byword for corruption and military dictatorship. A nation full of abundant natural resources with a government that constantly failed its people – a people who prize education but are prevented from fully realising their potential. The difficulties were such that the current Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, felt she needed to leave the country in which she grew up – which she did in 1996, when she was 16.
Artist of the people: Omofemi, despite an impressive art career, bears no airs and graces
Akinseye Emmanuel
Omofemi, who still lives in Ibadan, but now with his wife and young children, tells me of the poverty he witnessed as a child: ‘Every day I saw people struggle,’ he says. And this experience has indelibly marked him.
He did odd jobs as a boy, from working in a restaurant to carrying beer around the city. This picaresque, Dickensian life culminated in him being an artist. His mind and hands always returned to art, despite the other jobs. Although Omofemi is now renowned for painting the most famous (at the time) white woman in the world, his life was shaped by the fact that he saw almost exclusively ordinary black faces growing up. ‘I wake up every morning and I see black people,’ he says while describing life in Ibadan.
