Adebayo Bolaji (born 15 May 1983) is a London-based painter, actor, writer and director.
Adebayo Tibabalase Bolaji was born in Perivale in the London Borough of Ealing, of Nigerian parents and is an English actor, writer and director. Bolaji began his acting career when he was 14 with the National Youth Music Theatre making his West End debut in their 1997 production of Bugsy Malone at the Queen's Theatre.
With NYMT he performed at the Edinburgh Festival three times, in Tokyo, at the Palace Theatre and the Lyceum Theatre in the West End.
Bolaji is a self-taught artist and came to work with the medium of paint later on in his acting career. His work as a painter mainly deals with the process and narrative of change, and very much champions the artistic process being as important as the end result. Finding the likes of Francis Bacon, Dubuffet and Jean-Michel Basquiat and ideas that run back to the 1960s Oshogbo Art Movement in Nigeria, as part inspirations. In his own words: "Painting for me, can very much be like improvisation or devising in the theatre. One puts an idea of a kind down and one responds (truthfully) to it... It's a constant conversation a visual dialogue with the subject matter always at the centre, until one arrives at the image which arguably has always been there since, I am always asking myself what is necessary... Or responding honestly (as best as I can) to each part. Consequently, I arrive at the final image and know my part of the conversation is done, it's now left for others to view it and have their own opinion/dialogue... Irrespective of mine."
In 2016 Bolaji was chosen as Tangle's commissioned artist for Yinka Shonibare's MBE renowned Guest Projects Space, in Hackney London, for emerging artists, subsequently Bolaji was selected to show his works at long standing contemporary gallery Galerie Proarta, in Zürich Switzerland.
