CHUKWUOGO-ROY, Chinwe Ifeoma

1952 - 2012

Chinwe Ifeoma Obiageli Chukwuogo was born in Ondo State, Nigeria on 2 May 1952, 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 Umubele, Awka Anambra State and in 1975 moved to Britain. Chinwe studied at East Ham College and obtained a B.A. (hons) Degree in Graphic Design from Hornsey College of Art in 1978 and in 1988 became a professional artist. She married at Sudbury, Suffolk in 1980 Roderick Chisholm Roy (born January 1949) and they had two sons, Chinedu Chisholm Roy (born April 1981) and Alasdair Nonyelu Donald Roy (born October 1985), and an adopted daughter, Nwiru, from when she painted as Chukwuogo-Roy. Her paintings, prints and sculptures are figurative, in the genres of portraiture, still-life, landscape and narrative subjects. 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. Other high-profile commissions include portraits of Kriss Akabusi, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the Lord Mayor of Norwich and was commissioned by Martin Keown to paint Arsenal’s Highbury Stadium. In 2003, Chukwuogo-Roy represented the United Kingdom at the European Council Committee in Paris, advising on Contemporary African Art and Artists. She was a member of Sudbourne Park Printmakers and has had many solo exhibitions including those at Christchurch Mansions, Ipswich; Mall Galleries, London; The Royal Commonwealth Society, London; Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia; Reve's Cork Street Gallery, London; Connecticut University, USA; Didi Museum, Lagos; UNESCO, Paris; Aldeburgh Festival Gallery, Suffolk; Colchester and Ipswich Museum, Suffolk. In 2003, Chukwuogo-Roy was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of East Anglia and in 2010 was made a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her contributions to art. Chinwe Ifeoma Obiageli Chukwuogo-Roy lived with her husband and her sister's daughter, whom she had adopted at birth, at Glevering Mill near Easton Suffolk where she died, after a lengthy illness with cancer, on 17 December 2012.

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Works by This Artist