Twins Seven Seven, born Omoba Taiwo Olaniyi Oyewale-Toyeje Oyelale Osuntoki (3 May 1944 – 16 June 2011) was a Nigerian painter, sculptor and musician. He was an itinerant singer and dancer before he began his career as an artist, first attending in 1964 an Mbari Mbayo workshop conducted by Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier in Osogbo. Twins Seven Seven went on to become one of the best known artists of the Osogbo School. Early life and education He was born as Omoba Taiwo Olaniyi Oyewale-Toyeje Oyekale Osuntoki to a father, Aitoyeje, who was a Muslim from Ibadan, Oyo State, and a mother, Mary, who was a Christian from Ogidi, Kogi State, in Nigeria. The name by which he became known alludes to the fact that he was the only surviving child of seven sets of twins born to his mother, Nigeria having the world's highest twinning rate. His mother was instructed by a babalawo to drink water sacred to the river goddess Osun to ensure her child's survival. As a result, it was believed that Twins Seven Seven was a reincarnation of his great-grandfather, Osun-toki, whose name means "Osun is worthy of worship." As a child, he was often difficult to his mother, threatening to "go away" again to the spirit realm, so the babalawo would etch small incisions on his face with special medicine herbs to ensure his permanency in the physical realm. The etchings remained on his face into adulthood. Twins Seven Seven's introduction to the arts was not through painting, but through dance at the age of 16, part of his inspiration for dance stemming from a Yoruba custom that stated that a woman who had birthed twins should dance throughout the streets for money, so Twins Seven Seven danced on his mother's behalf. He attended primary and secondary school, as well as briefly attending a teachers' training college for one year, and although he achieved academic success in his examinations, he detested the structure of classrooms and grew stronger interests toward art and music. After performing a show in Oshogbo at the Mbari Club, Twins Seven Seven encountered Ulli Beier, a German editor and scholar living there at the time, who with his wife Georgina Beier ran an artist workshop. The Oshogbo school prided itself as not being a place that taught artists, but rather provided opportunities to confirm the individual vision of the different artists.