Kehinde Wiley is a New York-based portrait painter. Rendered in a realistic mode—while making references to specific Old Master paintings—Wiley creates a fusion of period styles. Wiley’s work has been featured on the TV show Empire, and partly because he is a well-known and, in some ways, controversial figure in the art world. Wiley takes contemporary figures — oftentimes young black men and women — and places them in old European art traditions: Oil paintings, portraits, stained glass and even bronze sculpture.
