Artist Kehinde Wiley: ‘The new work is about what it feels like to be young, Black and alive in the 21st century’

The US painter is famous for reimagining the western portrait tradition with Black protagonists - and for his painting of Barack Obama. Now he aims to refresh the Romantic landscape canon for his new show at the National Gallery in London

Kehinde Wiley has a love-hate relationship with western art history. There's something glorious about the portraits that you see of aristocrats and royal families. Something beautiful in those expansive imperialist landscapes." But there's a dead end. Such paintings, from the baroque, rococo, renaissance and Dutch golden age eras, are ultimately displays of European power, wealth, and beauty. What I wanted to do was to take the good parts, the parts that I love, and fertilise them with things that I know to be beautiful - people who happen to look like me."

Wiley, 44, beloved by hip-hop superstars, signed to a Hollywood talent agency, and the first Black, gay artist to paint a US president's official portrait, rose to art world fame in the 2000s for reimagining such classic European paintings with Black protagonists. His brightly coloured work is easy to identify: glowing brown skin, statuesque poses, richly patterned, often floral, backgrounds and a roster of unfamiliar but photogenic faces. His subversion of the conventions of the medium often involved creating pastiches that foreground Black youth and hip-hop culture and fashion; his works include remakes of Napoleon Crossing the Alps, by Jacques-Louis David, Jacob de Graeff by Gerard ter Borch and The Dead Christ in the Tomb by Hans Holbein the Younger. While he is famed for painting celebrities and cultural figures, from Spike Lee to LL Cool J, Questlove to Ice-T (his best known work is his 2018 portrait of Barack Obama, sitting relaxed on a wooden chair and surrounded by an abundance of leafy flowers), his work is just as likely to feature ordinary Black people he has found by scouring the local neighbourhoods.