Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy

Chinwe Ifeoma Chukwuogo-Roy MBE (2 May 1952 −17 December 2012)was a visual artist who was born in Awka (Oka) Anambra state Nigeria, but spent much of her young life in Ikom on the Cameroon border, before moving back to the family home at Umubele in Awka. She lived in Britain since 1975. Her paintings, prints and sculptures are predominantly figurative, in the genres of portraiture, still-life, landscape and narrative subjects. She won international attention in 2002 for being only one of two Nigerian artists (the other being Ben Enwonwu) to have been allowed to paint official portraits of Queen Elizabeth II.
Chukwuogo-Roy was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2009 Birthday Honours

 

Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy was born in Ondo State, Nigeria, but moved with her family to Ikom in Cross Rivers State, where her father had extensive cocoa plantations. As a teenager she was a refugee in the Biafran War after which she moved to the family home in Awka Anambra State and in 1975 she moved to Britain. She studied at East Ham College and subsequently obtained a B.A. Hons. Degree in Graphic Design from Hornsey College of Art (now part of Middlesex University) in 1978. She took up painting professionally in 1988.
Chukwuogo-Roy first gained international fame for painting the official Golden Jubilee portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, commissioned by The Commonwealth Secretariat. The full-length portrait was unveiled at a ceremony at Marlborough House by former Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon on Commonwealth Day, 2002.
Golden Jubilee Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II
Other high-profile commissions include portraits of Kriss Akabusi, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the Lord Mayor of Norwich. She was commissioned by Martin Keown to paint Arsenal's Highbury Stadium.
In December 2012, after a lengthy illness with cancer, she died at her home in Hacheston, near Framlingham, Suffolk

Chukwuogo-Roy created paintings, prints and sculptures that are predominantly figurative, in the genres of portraiture, still-life, landscape and narrative subjects. Her naturalistic portraiture is usually optimistic or celebratory in tone. However, she also created many works that, according to Sandra Gibson, writing for Nerve, elicit "complex feelings of desperation, dread and aspiration".Notable among such works are her "Migrants" series and her "African Slave Trade" series.Wikipedia