Born in an agricultural area of Central Nigeria in 1992, Oliver Okolo had two dreams as a child: one of becoming a basketball star and the other of becoming an artist. Drawing Mickey Mouse and, later, Marvel Comics superhero characters to develop his hand in his childhood and formative years, he eventually combined his two dreams into a series of handmade comics of himself as a basketball star. Sharing his illustrated tales with his circle of friends, he showed his colleagues what he was capable of doing-through the application of a little imagination and a lot of determination.
Not able to fulfill a hope of studying art in college, he went on to earn a bachelor's degree in labor relations from Caritas University, a private Catholic school in Nigeria, where he developed a compassion for the unfortunate and the oppressed. After leaving school, Okolo renewed his passion for art and decided to pursue a career as an artist. Drawn to the works of classical artists-especially the Old Masters, even though he had only seen them in books and online rather than in real life-he was accepted as an apprentice to Clement Nwafor, an Abuja-based Nigerian artist who beautifully mixes fabric collage and portraiture in his realist paintings.
