Tayo Fatunla is one of Africa's leading comic artists, whose work is published internationally on regular basis. Born in Wimbledon, England, in 1961, Tayo was educated first in Nigeria and later in America at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in New Jersey in the early 1980s. Tayo's first cartoon was published at the age of seventeen in a children's magazine in Nigeria called Apollo. Since then, Tayo has worked for Nigerian national newspapers such as Punch, Concord, Guardian and Daily Times. While in the Art school in the USA, Tayo worked for several clients as a designer and caricaturist. He also had his work published by DC Comics.
Tayo started working for West Africa, a London based news weekly magazine in 1989. In the same year his illustrated educational feature on African Heritage worldwide, called 'Our Roots', was serialised on weekly basis in the Voice, Britain's biggest black newspaper. In 1991 it appeared in album. Tayo has done cartoons for BBC's Focus On Africa magazine and the BBC Hausa educational booklet on Aids. Other publications Tayo has done are drawings for journals, include New African, Thamesmead Times, African Business in Britain and Courrier International in Paris and in books such as Od'd On O.J., Human Rights, Cartooning Aids, Ecotoons. Tayo has had his work exhibited in Britain, USA, France, Egypt, Nigeria, in Finland and also in Italy, in the exhibition 'Matite Africane'. He also has held series of cartoon workshops in the UK and abroad. His cartoons are on permanent display at the International Museum of Cartoon Art (IMCA), Boca Raton, Florida. In 2001 he launched his book compilation of his editorial cartoons titled 'Tayo - Thro' The Years' at the British Cartoon Centre, London.
Tayo is married with two children and lives in Kent, England.
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