Kimathi Donkor

Kimathi Donkor (born in 1965) is a contemporary British artist whose large-scale figurative paintings are "genuine cornucopias of interwoven reference: to Western art, social and political events, and to the artist's own biography". Based in London, UK, he has family connections in Jamaica, Zambia, Nigeria and Ghana.

Donkor was born in Bournemouth, England, in 1965. He has said of his background: "I was born in the UK to an Anglo-Jewish mother and Ghanaian father, but was raised by my adopted parents who were from Jamaica and the UK. We lived for a time in Zambia, Central Africa, where my adopted dad worked as a vet. I finished my schooling in the west of England, then moved to London, where I eventually settled. In the meantime, my adopted parents had divorced and remarried, so the family diversity actually increased, as Zambians also joined the party. This smörgåsbord life induced an early sense of the wondrous, and sometimes maddening, complexity of identities and histories, which, I think, has been reflected in my artworks. Precisely because I was such an intimate witness to the multiple crossings and re-crossings of stories, images and journeys from around the world."

Donkor received his BA (Hons) degree in fine art from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and a master's degree in fine art at Camberwell College of Arts. He also participated in community education initiatives such as Black History for Action. In 2011, he was the recipient of the Derek Hill Foundation Scholarship for the British School at Rome.

Donkor’s history paintings "fearlessly tackle key, dramatic, monumental moments of African diaspora history ... with a painterly preciseness that borders on aesthetic frugality", according to art historian Eddie Chambers. In 2005, Time Out magazine reported that officers from London’s Metropolitan Police had entered the Bettie Morton Gallery to demand the removal of one the artist’s paintings, Helping With Enquiries (1984), from his solo exhibition Fall/Uprising (which addressed policing controversies). Gallery staff refused to comply and police later issued a statement that "no further action" would be taken against the painter.

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