‘She sat for him 12 times’: The Nigerian artist who made a bronze sculpture of Queen Elizabeth II for his home
She said she wanted to bring the monarch’s ‘steely eyes’ to her home
‘I’m going to put in a plaque with her name on it,’ the artist said
The artist hopes to bring Elizabeth to a museum in his home village in Kent
A bronze statue of the Queen – created by Nigerian artist Zainab Hamidi – has been installed at her family home and is due to be unveiled today.
At a ceremony at her home in London today, Zainab Hamidi announced that a plaque with the Queen’s name will be placed in one corner of her residence.
She also revealed that she hoped it would be the first of many to be placed in public places to commemorate the Queen.
Speaking at the end of the ceremony, she said: ‘I want to bring the Queen’s eyes to my home… She has a steely look.’
A day earlier, Hamidi released a video on Twitter and Facebook announcing that she had made the portrait of the Queen after watching a BBC film about her life.
Hamidi, 45, first created the head of Elizabeth in 2016 after watching a biography of the monarch.
‘I couldn’t believe it,’ she said in the video.
‘This is a very special portrait. A portrait I wanted to make for a very special person. I couldn’t imagine it more suitable to be placed in her home and to represent her at her height.
‘I wanted to make it as if we’re watching her every day. This is a portrait I wanted to make in her honour.’
Hamidi, who is a Nigerian-British artist, said she had considered many portraits to try for her Queen Elizabeth statue but her decision to paint the portrait on a bronze was ‘a dream come true’.
‘For this to work on a real scale, it needed to be real wood,’ Hamidi said, explaining how she had sourced the bronze. She was ‘scared’ it was too smooth to be useful.
She also noted it would ‘need constant maintenance’.
However, she
