Discover the work of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

One of the most important painters working today | Exhibition opens 18 November at Tate Modern Having trouble viewing this email? [Click here]( to view it in browser. GET TO KNOW [LYNETTE YIADOM-BOAKYE]( [A painting of two girls on a beach]( Born in London in 1977, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is one of the most important painters working today. Ahead of her major [Tate Britain exhibition]( opening next month, get to know the artist and her enigmatic work, filled with imagined figures and poetic titles. [HER PROCESS]( [A portrait of a man against a green background]( Yiadom-Boakye works with oil paint on canvas or coarse linen. Ideas for her paintings are prompted by a variety of observations – a colour, a composition, a gesture or particular direction of the light. She uses found images, memories, literature and the history of painting as sources for her work. Each painting is an exploration of a different mood, movement and pose, worked out on the surface of the canvas. 'I work from scrapbooks, I work from images I collect, I work from life a little bit, I seek out the imagery I need. I take photos. All of that is then composed on the canvas.' [FIGURES]( [A portrait of two male figures. They are crouching in profile facing one another and dressed in black. The background is cream and grey ]( Yiadom-Boakye paints individual figures and groups of people, typically reading, resting or lounging, in both groups and alone. However, the people she paints are not real. She paints them using her imagination, as well as found images from scrapbooks and magazines... [BLACKNESS]( Almost all of the figures seen in Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings are black. Writer and critic Hilton Als has written that Yiadom-Boakye is ‘interested in black society, not as it was affected or shaped by the white world, but as it exist[s] unto itself’. As the artist describes: ‘Blackness has never been other to me. Therefore, I’ve never felt the need to explain its presence in the work anymore than I’ve felt the need to explain my presence in the world...' [Read the full article]( Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is supported by Denise Coates Foundation, with additional support from the Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Exhibition Supporters Circle, Tate Americas Foundation, Tate International Council, Tate Patrons and Tate Members. Exhibition organised by Tate Britain in collaboration with Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, and Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Condor And The Mole 2011 Arts Council Collection (London, UK) © Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Lynette Yiadom-Boakye A Passion Like No Other 2012 Collection of Lonti Ebers © Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Lynette Yiadom-Boakye No Need Of Speech 2018 Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, USA) © Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Lynette Yiadom-Boakye The Cream and the Taste 2013 Private Collection © Lynette Yiadom-Boakye If you have any questions about this email from Tate contact [Tate Visitor Information]( If you wish to stop receiving Tate emails please [unsubscribe]( Let us know how you’d like to hear from us by updating [your preferences]( [Tate’s full website privacy policy]( © Copyright Tate 2020