1 of 3
Photo courtesy of Ephraim Skipper.
Artist Steve Skipper at work on his painting, titled “Majesty,” in his studio.
2 of 3
Photo courtesy of Ephraim Skipper.
Steve Skipper works on a painting of Queen Elizabeth II in his home studio.
3 of 3
Photo by Katherine Ives, courtesy of Steve Skipper.
Homewood native and renowned artist, Steve Skipper, unveils his painting featuring Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at the 200th anniversary of the British Consulate in Savannah, Georgia on May 9.
Artist Steve Skipper jokes that his latest painting made history twice. For starters, it was the first time a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II was put on hold for Alabama football.
“I got started on the portrait of the queen, and then Alabama was playing Auburn in the Iron Bowl,” Skipper said.
As everybody knows — and has strong feelings about, one way or the other — Alabama beat Auburn “in dramatic form” in November of last year, after quarterback Jalen Milroe’s game-winning touchdown pass.
“People started calling me, wanting a painting of that,” said Skipper, who grew up in Homewood and paints sanctioned and officially licensed artwork for the University of Alabama.
But after he finished the painting of Milroe, called “The Resilient Gravedigger,” he started working on the queen again and finished the piece, titled “Majesty,” in March of this year.
The painting, an original oil on stretched canvas, took a little more than 1,500 hours to complete and is scheduled for an official transfer to the royal family in Atlanta in July.
The second, more significant way Skipper made history with this painting is that he is the first Black American to be commissioned by Buckingham Palace to create a painting of the queen for the Royal Collection.
“In the 1950s, a Nigerian young man [Ben Enwonwu] did a sculpture of her, but no African-American had ever done a painting of Her Majesty,” Skipper said.
He said he got the opportunity to paint Queen Elizabeth II after he did some civil rights artwork years ago and met Andrew Young, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, along the way.
Young was appointed ambassador by former President Jimmy Carter and was the right hand of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Skipper said.
“He happened to be friends with someone who owned a museum in Atlanta and was very close friends with then-Prince Charles,” Skipper said of Young and his friend Rodney Cook Jr., owner of The Millennium Gate Museum. “We started talking about the possibility of doing a painting of the queen.”
Young spent three years teaching Skipper about “protocol and everything about being in front of royalty,” Skipper said. “I didn’t know anything about it.”
That included diplomacy, how to do business with a foreign government and how to dress, he said.
After the queen became ill, Skipper was asked to do a preliminary drawing from a photograph he had chosen. The photo was of her and one of her horses, Estimate, which won the Gold Cup at the 2013 Royal Ascot, one of the world’s most prestigious horse races.
“The queen loved horse racing; she loved horses, period,” Skipper said. “She used to come over here a lot to the Kentucky Derby.”
Usually at the Royal Ascot, the monarch presents the Gold Cup to the winner, but this time her horse was the winner.
“In the photo, her daughter, Princess Anne, was standing right behind her, and they were both petting Estimate,” Skipper said. “She passed away before I could finish the drawing.”
But Cook took the drawing with him to the coronation of King Charles to show the royal family, and “they loved it,” Skipper said.
That’s when the painting process began, and when the Iron Bowl interfered. But on May 9, “Majesty” was unveiled for British ambassadors in Savannah, Georgia.
“They went kind of crazy,” Skipper said with a laugh. “We now have consulates fighting over whether to keep it here or for it to go back to London.”
Reproductions of the painting will be done soon, and he’s looking forward to that.
The painting was a “kind of complicated” challenge, Skipper said.
“The clothing that she and her daughter wear are very, very elaborate in style,” he said. “It demanded a lot of detail and a lot of realism.”
He said the hardest part was the hats.
“The queen’s hat was like straw — it had all these holes you could see through and see the sky,” Skipper said. “It was very, very tough.”
He said his favorite part was painting Estimate because, like the queen, he also loves horses.
“It took about four months to complete it, but I think when we pulled the cover off of it the other day, the reaction of everybody there, I think we did something pretty good,” he said.
Skipper said he’s humbled by the opportunity to be the first African-American to paint Queen Elizabeth II for the Royal Collection.
“It’s kind of overwhelming,” he said. “I wish the young man from Nigeria was still alive so he could tell me how to handle this.”
Skipper said he was grateful also for the chance to represent Homewood and the Rosedale area where he grew up.
“One of the best things about the whole thing, people at the British Embassy know about Homewood, and that’s really exciting,” he said.
Skipper said his long painting career has been a gift from God.
“From age 13 to 16, I was in a gang. Then at 16, I became a Christian,” he said.
After someone dared him, he went to a revival service, not expecting it to change his life.
“I found out where my talent came
f-rom,” Skipper said. “I started using it to glorify God.”
He turned down art scholarships and says Jesus Christ is the one who taught him how to paint.
“It comes down to really being obedient to God and doing exactly what He wants me to do,” he said.
Skipper’s artwork has hung in the Professional Football Hall of Fame, the U.S. Capitol, the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the Paul W. “Bear” Bryant Museum, the National Art Museum of Sport and the NCAA headquarters.
He also does sanctioned and officially licensed artwork for Auburn University, the Dallas Cowboys, the Green Bay Packers, NASCAR, the Professional Bull Riders and the Professional Golfers Association of America.
For more information about Skipper’s art, visit steveskipperstudio.com.
