About Me

Linda Obobaifo (b. 2000, Skokie, Illinois) is a Nigerian-American emerging artist, painter, sculptor, and poet living and working in Manhattan, NY. Linda attended University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she obtained her BFA in painting (2022), while minoring in creative writing with a poetry emphasis. She received her MFA in painting at Boston University (2024). Linda comes from a diverse background in musical theater, orchestra, band, choir, and dance. Linda has exhibited work in galleries and museums across Illinois, Missouri, Massachusetts, New York, and Canada. Linda has received various awards and grants including the Florence M. House Scholarship (2022), Hugh and Allie D. Hughston Enochs Memorial Award (2022), James R. and Dorothy E. Shipley Award (2022), Joan Coffey Scholarship in Painting (2021), and the American Academy of Poets Prize (2021). Linda holds interests in poetry, painting, sculpting, music, fashion, film, and photography. She is a published author of her poetry book “Mellifluous Critiques.” In her free time she loves composing music on piano, guitar, and violin. She is an avid reader and enjoys poetry, non-fiction, fiction, and memoirs.

During her early life she gravitated towards writing and initially planned to major in English. She didn’t take up painting until her senior year of high school. Afterwards, she immediately knew that painting was her calling and ultimate passion. While she enjoys representational painting, she gravitates towards abstract painting and its spontaneity, ambition, and challenge that it brings her. Abstract art challenges her to create without viewing a tangible form. As a result, all of her paintings are improvised. The exciting part about creating abstract paintings, is that you never know the exact end result of a painting; trusting in the process and following her intuition, has been the most important factor to her abstract painting process.