Our Artists
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Ofobuike Okudoh
Ofobuike Okudoh is a visual artist and designer born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1992, who speaks through ethereal lines, patterns, and rich texture. After 4 years of extensive studies in Accounting, he decided to chase his creative dreams in France where he swiftly integrated into the culture and successfully completed his studies in Fashion design at the prestigious ESMOD Roubaix.
Identity has always been a pertinent subject, as his first exhibition 'Imprimé identifié' which held at Bureau d'Art et de la Recherche , Roubaix, France expressed rich prints with reference to textile art . Wearable art as it concerns tackling fast fashion is also one of his fortes.
His whimsical illustrations also graced the walls of the XI Bienal Internacional de Arte SUBA 2019 in Mexico as well as The African art exhibition at the Jesuit institute in Nairobi where an impressive number of African masters were partakers.
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Maja Ruznic
Maja Ruznic (b. 1983, Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a New Mexico-based artist who paints diluted, out-of-focus figures and landscapes that explore nostalgia and childhood trauma and are influenced in part by war and the refugee experience. The ritualistic nature of her work reflects religious and mythological interests, including Slavic paganism and Shamanism. For six years following her graduation from the California College of the Arts, Ruznic worked with ink and watercolor in her small San Francisco bedroom. She refers to the loose, runny style she developed as “the drunken hand.” Ruznic has since expanded this gestural approach to oil, while still bearing the influence of water-based media.
Ruznic’s work is in the collections of the San Francesco MoMA, San Francesco, California; He Art Museum, Foshan; Dallas Art Museum, Dallas, Texas; The Rachofsky House, Dallas, Texas; EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo, Finland; Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; and the Jiménez–Colón Collection Collection, Puerto Rico. Recent exhibitions include the Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque (2022); Karma, New York, New York (2022); Museo di Palazzo Pretorio, Prato, Italy (2021); and Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, New Mexico (2021).
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Synthia SAINT JAMES
Synthia SAINT JAMES is a world-renowned multicultural visual artist (celebrating an over five decade career), and award-winning author and/or illustrator of 17 children's books, several poetry and affirmation books, a cookbook, a play, a monologue, and 2 marketing books. Her recent books include - Healers, Orishas, Shamans and Deities: The Healing Art of Synthia SAINT JAMES - in which she shares twelve of her paintings created between March and November 2020 and healing inspirations. She released her first short novel Hyacinth: A Novelette in 2021. Her first art table book My Multicultural World, HBCUs: Capturing the Quintessence, My Kaleidoscopic World, Selena’s Colourful Island, and Indigenous Inspirations: The Gift of Art were all released in 2022.
She is a popular keynote speaker, educator and public art designer who has garnered numerous awards, including the prestigious Trumpet Award, a Coretta Scott King Award, a HistoryMaker Award, and an Honorary Doctorate Degree from Saint Augustine's University. Dr. SAINT JAMES also serves as one of the Global Ambassadors for Susan G. Komen for the Cure's "Circle of Promise”.
Some of her most celebrated collectors include Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr., Glynn Turman, Jenifer Lewis, Regina Taylor, Brenda Russell, Vanessa Bell Calloway, and Pulitzer Prize winning writers Alice Walker and Charles Fuller.