Barack obama presidential portrait artist

Painting by Kehinde Wiley

President Barack Obama is an oil-on-canvas portrait of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, completed by the artist Kehinde Wiley in 2018 for the National Portrait Gallery.

Painting

In October 2017, it was announced that Wiley had been chosen by Barack Obama to paint an official portrait of the former president to appear in Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery "America's Presidents" exhibition.^[1] The painting depicts Obama sitting in a chair seemingly floating among foliage.^[2] The foliage is described by the artist as "chrysanthemums (the official flower of Chicago), jasmine (symbolic of Hawaii where the president spent most of his childhood) and African blue lilies (alluding to the president's late Kenyan father)."^[3] Obama is wearing a 39mm White Gold Rolex Cellini watch which he has chosen to wear on multiple high profile occasions, including the inaugurat