Kehinde Wiley was born in  1977 and is  a New York City-based portrait painter who is highly known for naturalistic paintings of black people in heroic poses. The Columbus Museum of Art, which hosted an exhibition of his work in 2007, describes his work with the following: “Wiley has gained recent acclaim for his heroic portraits which address the image and status of young African-American men in contemporary culture.” Wiley often references Old Masters paintings for the pose of the figure. His paintings often blur the boundaries which are between traditional and contemporary modes of representation.

I found Wiley’s paintings of interest to my project as his portraits are surrounded by brightly coloured backgrounds, which are usually similar to African materials. I thought that i could show some experimentation with my photographs by putting the portrait images which i made onto a material style background. This may either add to the images or take away from them. I think that it will weaken the narrative of the photograph and how ,much it tells us about the individual however because it doesn’t have anything in the background it will make you focus on the individual themselves.

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