Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is a British artist and writer acclaimed for her enigmatic portraits. The figures in her paintings are not real people – she creates them from found images and her own imagination. Often painted in spontaneous and instinctive bursts, her figures seem to exist outside of a specific time or place. Both familiar and mysterious, they invite viewers to project their own interpretations, and raise important questions of identity and representation.
Writing is central to Yiadom-Boakye’s artistic practice and her paintings are often given poetic titles. She has explained: ‘I write about the things I can’t paint and paint the things I can’t write about.’
LYNETTE YIADOM-BOAKYE (British, b. 1977)
oil on canvas
Acquired in 2014
