C’BABI BAYOC ART GALLERY

Cbabi (pronounced Kuh-bob-bi) Bayoc was born Clifford Miskell in 1973. In 1997 he legally changed his name to his current name (‘Cbabi’ is an acronym for ‘Creative Black Artist Battling Ignorance’, and ‘Bayoc’ is an acronym for ‘Blessed African Youth of Creativity’).

He was born in Fort Dix, New Jersey while his father was in the Air Force and he has lived at Air Force bases in Louisiana and Korea. The family eventually settled in O’Fallon, Illinois when his father was stationed at Scott Air Force Base there. He currently makes his home in St. Louis, Mo. with his wife, Reine, and their three children.

Bayoc attended Belleville Area College for two years before attending Grambling State University in Louisiana, from which he graduated in 1995 with a Bachelors Degree in Art. After working as a caricature artist at Six Flags Over St. Louis for a short time, he turned full time to a career as an illustrator. His first big client was Rap Pages magazine where he did a caricature of the feature artist each month. This led to more work during caricatures on album covers and in music videos, as well as high profiled commissions by companies such as Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, New Line Cinema and MCA Records, and celebrity commissions by Prince and others.

Keeping a sketch book and pencil with him wherever he goes, Bayoc captures vignettes of daily life and, as an artist who is also thoroughly immersed in his role as a father, children and themes of family naturally find their way into a lot of his work. .