Watercolor on paper, framed. Featuring a portrait of a woman. Signed Chris Olfili on the lower right corner. 27 x 18.5 cm (10.6 x 7.3 in). PROVENANCE: Southern Ontario estate

Chris Ofili (born 1968) is a British contemporary painter, working in a vibrant palette and a variety of applied textures to examine both the contemporary and historical black experience. In intricately detailed works, Ofili deploys inventive figuration rendered in paint and collaged materials such as glitter, magazines cut-outs, and resin. Born on October 10, 1968 in Manchester, England, he went on to study at the Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. He received the prestigious Turner Prize for his work in 1998, cementing his status as one of the most influential members of the Young British Artists. Ofili is perhaps best known for the controversy created by his painting The Holy Virgin Mary (1996) which, when exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum as part of the seminal 1998 “Sensation” exhibition, sparked a series of protests. For its subject matter and its use of lacquered, glittered elephant dung as a material, then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani dismissed the work as "sick," and the painting was later vandalized - though it was successfully restored. Nevertheless, Ofili’s work has continued to be exhibited worldwide, notably back in New York with a critically acclaimed mid-career retrospective at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in 2014, "Chris Ofili: Night and Day."

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