Dr. Dimeji Onafuwa (Dimeji) is a Nigerian-born artist, designer, and researcher. Tilling passion from his African heart with American soil, he cultivates evocative and emotional scenes of assimilation. Dimeji uses color boldly and simply to create a luminous quality of melancholia, allowing the viewer a powerful sense of human-ness and a presence of the spiritual.

He draws inspiration from Henri Matisse, Fauvism, the 1960s San Francisco Bay Area figurative artists and a lot of African and African-American artists, including Amy Sherard, Sanya Ojikutu, Kolade Oshinowo, Wole Lagunju, & Victor Ehikamenor. He also draws on concepts from the Yoruba art. A few examples are ‘Ona,’ meaning embellishment of form; ‘Ara,’ creativity, ‘Era,’ improvisation, and ‘Pipe,’ equaling completeness.

Dr. Onafuwa has many talents, and painting is among them. He has been invited to speak at conferences, podcasts and to facilitate workshops globally on topics as varied as art, alternative economics, transition design, diversity and inclusion in design, the commons, allyship, and algorithmic bias.

Adding to his native Nigeria and new home, Dimeji has exhibited in several U.S. cities, including Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Athens West Virginia, Charlotte, and Winston-Salem North Carolina. Dimeji is represented by Sozo Gallery in Charlotte NC.