Taking inspiration from Renaissance portraiture and late European painting, Kehinde Wiley paints African-American men in poses similar to the prophets, angels, discoverers and royalty found in early painted portraits.

Wiley was born in 1977 in Los Angeles and now lives and works in New York. He gained a BFA in 1999 from San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Yale University School of Art, New Haven, in 2001.