Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has worked with curators Andrea Schlieker and Isabella Maidment to create a sequence of poetic encounters in the upper galleries at Tate Britain, her paintings exist in dialogue with each other organised not chronologically like a conventional survey show, rather, mixed so that paintings from different parts of her oeuvre meet in the sequence of rooms.
Lynette’s paintings are figurative, predominantly portraits, her characters speak to us, almost literally. They seem to engage us. She has caught them at the moment of speech, laughter, dance or song, there are moments of contemplation, celebration, despair and joy.
Caught in a Daumier-caricature-like fashion, expressions and gestures are brought to life formed with the paint. Her style is distinctive and has developed considerably from the cartoonish, and slightly sinister FIRST (2003), painted for her graduate show at the Royal Academy which hangs in the first room.
Lynette has said historical paintings are an inspiration for her work, citing Sickert and Sargent as informing her practice. She references Sargent, in the red dressing gown in FIRST which, as with many of Lynette’s motifs, reappears worn by another man in Any Number of Preoccupations (2010) a homage to Singer Sargent’s Doctor Pozzi at Home (1881). Her quick intuitive brushwork also evokes the painting of Walter Sickert, particularly his more expressive later work, toward the end of his career with the invention of better photography, Sickert worked from news cuttings, a practice that may have influenced the shift in Lynette's work; from painting from life to using scrapbooks and archives of found images. Her titles are not descriptive but reference her poetry and writing—a deliberate decision to let the viewer bring their own meaning to the pieces.
Lynette is an exceptional painter, even if the poetry of her work doesn’t speak to you it is worth looking closely to see her mastery of tone, colour and light, simply try and take a photo of one of her paintings, the camera will struggle to find the correct exposure, but the picture will be perfectly formed in each incarnation, showing a complete mastery of light. The confidence of her brushwork is inspiring, in fact it was the simplicity in which she conveyed a man pulling on a sock in The Generosity (2010) that struck Tate’s conservationists and led to the gallery acquiring the piece for their collection.
Remarkably, these intimate portraits are not close friends, lovers or family members. The characters that reach out of pictorial space—that command us with their gaze and whose expressions reveal so much of who they are—are completely fabricated. They are figments of Lynette’s imagination, informed by the found images from her sketchbooks. Sometimes the paintings are allegorical, people appear with animals… foxes, dogs or owls, other times the painting is so real and tangible it feels like one of our own memories.
Lynette trained at Central Saint Martins before moving to Falmouth, Cornwall. It was away from London that she found she was more interested in the imaginative possibilities of painting itself, than the portrayal of reality. The people in her paintings are born of the paint as much as the mind. There are no preparatory drawings; Lynette works out everything on the canvas. Inspiration comes from within, an intuitive form of expression that results in recurring motifs—like talismans—the striped top is something that reappears in her work and she has said she feels she must paint it at the start of any new project, although it appears only once in this exhibition. However, another motif, the fox or mink tippet can be seen again, draped over the shoulder of a dancer or hanging from the neck in a portrait.
Interestingly, men and women never appear together in her work. It is something she said she has no interest in depicting. Though she paints men and women separately, her groups are usually male. Dancers taking a break, boys perhaps dressing after a swim, her scenes are intentionally difficult to decipher, with no clues to time period or location. Curiously, a diptych features a portrait of a young man and woman, though appearing side by side they are separated by their individual canvases. Another portrait of a man in the same room has the title, Few reasons left to like you.’ Is there a tension between man and woman or are they just inhabiting separate realms which come together only privately?
Lynette’s work is very intimate despite the people she paints not existing. We wonder to what extent these people are imagined? They are like characters from a novel, familiar faces appear throughout the exhibition… and like characters from novels they may well be based on real people. Either way, Lynette’s work is highly personal and she does not often want to sell. Fly In League With the Night Owl is a rare opportunity to see the work she has decided to share of which much is now privately owned.
The exhibition runs from 24th November to 26th February 2023, open daily 10AM - 6PM.
Don’t forget to collect your Yamos on your way in…
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has worked with curators Andrea Schlieker and Isabella Maidment to create a sequence of poetic encounters in the upper galleries at Tate Britain, her paintings exist in dialogue with each other organised not chronologically like a conventional survey show, rather, mixed so that paintings from different parts of her oeuvre meet in the sequence of rooms.
Lynette’s paintings are figurative, predominantly portraits, her characters speak to us, almost literally. They seem to engage us. She has caught them at the moment of speech, laughter, dance or song, there are moments of contemplation, celebration, despair and joy.
Caught in a Daumier-caricature-like fashion, expressions and gestures are brought to life formed with the paint. Her style is distinctive and has developed considerably from the cartoonish, and slightly sinister FIRST (2003), painted for her graduate show at the Royal Academy which hangs in the first room.
Lynette has said historical paintings are an inspiration for her work, citing Sickert and Sargent as informing her practice. She references Sargent, in the red dressing gown in FIRST which, as with many of Lynette’s motifs, reappears worn by another man in Any Number of Preoccupations (2010) a homage to Singer Sargent’s Doctor Pozzi at Home (1881). Her quick intuitive brushwork also evokes the painting of Walter Sickert, particularly his more expressive later work, toward the end of his career with the invention of better photography, Sickert worked from news cuttings, a practice that may have influenced the shift in Lynette's work; from painting from life to using scrapbooks and archives of found images. Her titles are not descriptive but reference her poetry and writing—a deliberate decision to let the viewer bring their own meaning to the pieces.
Lynette is an exceptional painter, even if the poetry of her work doesn’t speak to you it is worth looking closely to see her mastery of tone, colour and light, simply try and take a photo of one of her paintings, the camera will struggle to find the correct exposure, but the picture will be perfectly formed in each incarnation, showing a complete mastery of light. The confidence of her brushwork is inspiring, in fact it was the simplicity in which she conveyed a man pulling on a sock in The Generosity (2010) that struck Tate’s conservationists and led to the gallery acquiring the piece for their collection.
Remarkably, these intimate portraits are not close friends, lovers or family members. The characters that reach out of pictorial space—that command us with their gaze and whose expressions reveal so much of who they are—are completely fabricated. They are figments of Lynette’s imagination, informed by the found images from her sketchbooks. Sometimes the paintings are allegorical, people appear with animals… foxes, dogs or owls, other times the painting is so real and tangible it feels like one of our own memories.
Lynette trained at Central Saint Martins before moving to Falmouth, Cornwall. It was away from London that she found she was more interested in the imaginative possibilities of painting itself, than the portrayal of reality. The people in her paintings are born of the paint as much as the mind. There are no preparatory drawings; Lynette works out everything on the canvas. Inspiration comes from within, an intuitive form of expression that results in recurring motifs—like talismans—the striped top is something that reappears in her work and she has said she feels she must paint it at the start of any new project, although it appears only once in this exhibition. However, another motif, the fox or mink tippet can be seen again, draped over the shoulder of a dancer or hanging from the neck in a portrait.
Interestingly, men and women never appear together in her work. It is something she said she has no interest in depicting. Though she paints men and women separately, her groups are usually male. Dancers taking a break, boys perhaps dressing after a swim, her scenes are intentionally difficult to decipher, with no clues to time period or location. Curiously, a diptych features a portrait of a young man and woman, though appearing side by side they are separated by their individual canvases. Another portrait of a man in the same room has the title, Few reasons left to like you.’ Is there a tension between man and woman or are they just inhabiting separate realms which come together only privately?
Lynette’s work is very intimate despite the people she paints not existing. We wonder to what extent these people are imagined? They are like characters from a novel, familiar faces appear throughout the exhibition… and like characters from novels they may well be based on real people. Either way, Lynette’s work is highly personal and she does not often want to sell. Fly In League With the Night Owl is a rare opportunity to see the work she has decided to share of which much is now privately owned.
The exhibition runs from 24th November to 26th February 2023, open daily 10AM - 6PM.
Don’t forget to collect your Yamos on your way in…
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has worked with curators Andrea Schlieker and Isabella Maidment to create a sequence of poetic encounters in the upper galleries at Tate Britain, her paintings exist in dialogue with each other organised not chronologically like a conventional survey show, rather, mixed so that paintings from different parts of her oeuvre meet in the sequence of rooms.
Lynette’s paintings are figurative, predominantly portraits, her characters speak to us, almost literally. They seem to engage us. She has caught them at the moment of speech, laughter, dance or song, there are moments of contemplation, celebration, despair and joy.
Caught in a Daumier-caricature-like fashion, expressions and gestures are brought to life formed with the paint. Her style is distinctive and has developed considerably from the cartoonish, and slightly sinister FIRST (2003), painted for her graduate show at the Royal Academy which hangs in the first room.
Lynette has said historical paintings are an inspiration for her work, citing Sickert and Sargent as informing her practice. She references Sargent, in the red dressing gown in FIRST which, as with many of Lynette’s motifs, reappears worn by another man in Any Number of Preoccupations (2010) a homage to Singer Sargent’s Doctor Pozzi at Home (1881). Her quick intuitive brushwork also evokes the painting of Walter Sickert, particularly his more expressive later work, toward the end of his career with the invention of better photography, Sickert worked from news cuttings, a practice that may have influenced the shift in Lynette's work; from painting from life to using scrapbooks and archives of found images. Her titles are not descriptive but reference her poetry and writing—a deliberate decision to let the viewer bring their own meaning to the pieces.
Lynette is an exceptional painter, even if the poetry of her work doesn’t speak to you it is worth looking closely to see her mastery of tone, colour and light, simply try and take a photo of one of her paintings, the camera will struggle to find the correct exposure, but the picture will be perfectly formed in each incarnation, showing a complete mastery of light. The confidence of her brushwork is inspiring, in fact it was the simplicity in which she conveyed a man pulling on a sock in The Generosity (2010) that struck Tate’s conservationists and led to the gallery acquiring the piece for their collection.
Remarkably, these intimate portraits are not close friends, lovers or family members. The characters that reach out of pictorial space—that command us with their gaze and whose expressions reveal so much of who they are—are completely fabricated. They are figments of Lynette’s imagination, informed by the found images from her sketchbooks. Sometimes the paintings are allegorical, people appear with animals… foxes, dogs or owls, other times the painting is so real and tangible it feels like one of our own memories.
Lynette trained at Central Saint Martins before moving to Falmouth, Cornwall. It was away from London that she found she was more interested in the imaginative possibilities of painting itself, than the portrayal of reality. The people in her paintings are born of the paint as much as the mind. There are no preparatory drawings; Lynette works out everything on the canvas. Inspiration comes from within, an intuitive form of expression that results in recurring motifs—like talismans—the striped top is something that reappears in her work and she has said she feels she must paint it at the start of any new project, although it appears only once in this exhibition. However, another motif, the fox or mink tippet can be seen again, draped over the shoulder of a dancer or hanging from the neck in a portrait.
Interestingly, men and women never appear together in her work. It is something she said she has no interest in depicting. Though she paints men and women separately, her groups are usually male. Dancers taking a break, boys perhaps dressing after a swim, her scenes are intentionally difficult to decipher, with no clues to time period or location. Curiously, a diptych features a portrait of a young man and woman, though appearing side by side they are separated by their individual canvases. Another portrait of a man in the same room has the title, Few reasons left to like you.’ Is there a tension between man and woman or are they just inhabiting separate realms which come together only privately?
Lynette’s work is very intimate despite the people she paints not existing. We wonder to what extent these people are imagined? They are like characters from a novel, familiar faces appear throughout the exhibition… and like characters from novels they may well be based on real people. Either way, Lynette’s work is highly personal and she does not often want to sell. Fly In League With the Night Owl is a rare opportunity to see the work she has decided to share of which much is now privately owned.
The exhibition runs from 24th November to 26th February 2023, open daily 10AM - 6PM.
Don’t forget to collect your Yamos on your way in…
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has worked with curators Andrea Schlieker and Isabella Maidment to create a sequence of poetic encounters in the upper galleries at Tate Britain, her paintings exist in dialogue with each other organised not chronologically like a conventional survey show, rather, mixed so that paintings from different parts of her oeuvre meet in the sequence of rooms.
Lynette’s paintings are figurative, predominantly portraits, her characters speak to us, almost literally. They seem to engage us. She has caught them at the moment of speech, laughter, dance or song, there are moments of contemplation, celebration, despair and joy.
Caught in a Daumier-caricature-like fashion, expressions and gestures are brought to life formed with the paint. Her style is distinctive and has developed considerably from the cartoonish, and slightly sinister FIRST (2003), painted for her graduate show at the Royal Academy which hangs in the first room.
Lynette has said historical paintings are an inspiration for her work, citing Sickert and Sargent as informing her practice. She references Sargent, in the red dressing gown in FIRST which, as with many of Lynette’s motifs, reappears worn by another man in Any Number of Preoccupations (2010) a homage to Singer Sargent’s Doctor Pozzi at Home (1881). Her quick intuitive brushwork also evokes the painting of Walter Sickert, particularly his more expressive later work, toward the end of his career with the invention of better photography, Sickert worked from news cuttings, a practice that may have influenced the shift in Lynette's work; from painting from life to using scrapbooks and archives of found images. Her titles are not descriptive but reference her poetry and writing—a deliberate decision to let the viewer bring their own meaning to the pieces.
Lynette is an exceptional painter, even if the poetry of her work doesn’t speak to you it is worth looking closely to see her mastery of tone, colour and light, simply try and take a photo of one of her paintings, the camera will struggle to find the correct exposure, but the picture will be perfectly formed in each incarnation, showing a complete mastery of light. The confidence of her brushwork is inspiring, in fact it was the simplicity in which she conveyed a man pulling on a sock in The Generosity (2010) that struck Tate’s conservationists and led to the gallery acquiring the piece for their collection.
Remarkably, these intimate portraits are not close friends, lovers or family members. The characters that reach out of pictorial space—that command us with their gaze and whose expressions reveal so much of who they are—are completely fabricated. They are figments of Lynette’s imagination, informed by the found images from her sketchbooks. Sometimes the paintings are allegorical, people appear with animals… foxes, dogs or owls, other times the painting is so real and tangible it feels like one of our own memories.
Lynette trained at Central Saint Martins before moving to Falmouth, Cornwall. It was away from London that she found she was more interested in the imaginative possibilities of painting itself, than the portrayal of reality. The people in her paintings are born of the paint as much as the mind. There are no preparatory drawings; Lynette works out everything on the canvas. Inspiration comes from within, an intuitive form of expression that results in recurring motifs—like talismans—the striped top is something that reappears in her work and she has said she feels she must paint it at the start of any new project, although it appears only once in this exhibition. However, another motif, the fox or mink tippet can be seen again, draped over the shoulder of a dancer or hanging from the neck in a portrait.
Interestingly, men and women never appear together in her work. It is something she said she has no interest in depicting. Though she paints men and women separately, her groups are usually male. Dancers taking a break, boys perhaps dressing after a swim, her scenes are intentionally difficult to decipher, with no clues to time period or location. Curiously, a diptych features a portrait of a young man and woman, though appearing side by side they are separated by their individual canvases. Another portrait of a man in the same room has the title, Few reasons left to like you.’ Is there a tension between man and woman or are they just inhabiting separate realms which come together only privately?
Lynette’s work is very intimate despite the people she paints not existing. We wonder to what extent these people are imagined? They are like characters from a novel, familiar faces appear throughout the exhibition… and like characters from novels they may well be based on real people. Either way, Lynette’s work is highly personal and she does not often want to sell. Fly In League With the Night Owl is a rare opportunity to see the work she has decided to share of which much is now privately owned.
The exhibition runs from 24th November to 26th February 2023, open daily 10AM - 6PM.
Don’t forget to collect your Yamos on your way in…
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has worked with curators Andrea Schlieker and Isabella Maidment to create a sequence of poetic encounters in the upper galleries at Tate Britain, her paintings exist in dialogue with each other organised not chronologically like a conventional survey show, rather, mixed so that paintings from different parts of her oeuvre meet in the sequence of rooms.
Lynette’s paintings are figurative, predominantly portraits, her characters speak to us, almost literally. They seem to engage us. She has caught them at the moment of speech, laughter, dance or song, there are moments of contemplation, celebration, despair and joy.
Caught in a Daumier-caricature-like fashion, expressions and gestures are brought to life formed with the paint. Her style is distinctive and has developed considerably from the cartoonish, and slightly sinister FIRST (2003), painted for her graduate show at the Royal Academy which hangs in the first room.
Lynette has said historical paintings are an inspiration for her work, citing Sickert and Sargent as informing her practice. She references Sargent, in the red dressing gown in FIRST which, as with many of Lynette’s motifs, reappears worn by another man in Any Number of Preoccupations (2010) a homage to Singer Sargent’s Doctor Pozzi at Home (1881). Her quick intuitive brushwork also evokes the painting of Walter Sickert, particularly his more expressive later work, toward the end of his career with the invention of better photography, Sickert worked from news cuttings, a practice that may have influenced the shift in Lynette's work; from painting from life to using scrapbooks and archives of found images. Her titles are not descriptive but reference her poetry and writing—a deliberate decision to let the viewer bring their own meaning to the pieces.
Lynette is an exceptional painter, even if the poetry of her work doesn’t speak to you it is worth looking closely to see her mastery of tone, colour and light, simply try and take a photo of one of her paintings, the camera will struggle to find the correct exposure, but the picture will be perfectly formed in each incarnation, showing a complete mastery of light. The confidence of her brushwork is inspiring, in fact it was the simplicity in which she conveyed a man pulling on a sock in The Generosity (2010) that struck Tate’s conservationists and led to the gallery acquiring the piece for their collection.
Remarkably, these intimate portraits are not close friends, lovers or family members. The characters that reach out of pictorial space—that command us with their gaze and whose expressions reveal so much of who they are—are completely fabricated. They are figments of Lynette’s imagination, informed by the found images from her sketchbooks. Sometimes the paintings are allegorical, people appear with animals… foxes, dogs or owls, other times the painting is so real and tangible it feels like one of our own memories.
Lynette trained at Central Saint Martins before moving to Falmouth, Cornwall. It was away from London that she found she was more interested in the imaginative possibilities of painting itself, than the portrayal of reality. The people in her paintings are born of the paint as much as the mind. There are no preparatory drawings; Lynette works out everything on the canvas. Inspiration comes from within, an intuitive form of expression that results in recurring motifs—like talismans—the striped top is something that reappears in her work and she has said she feels she must paint it at the start of any new project, although it appears only once in this exhibition. However, another motif, the fox or mink tippet can be seen again, draped over the shoulder of a dancer or hanging from the neck in a portrait.
Interestingly, men and women never appear together in her work. It is something she said she has no interest in depicting. Though she paints men and women separately, her groups are usually male. Dancers taking a break, boys perhaps dressing after a swim, her scenes are intentionally difficult to decipher, with no clues to time period or location. Curiously, a diptych features a portrait of a young man and woman, though appearing side by side they are separated by their individual canvases. Another portrait of a man in the same room has the title, Few reasons left to like you.’ Is there a tension between man and woman or are they just inhabiting separate realms which come together only privately?
Lynette’s work is very intimate despite the people she paints not existing. We wonder to what extent these people are imagined? They are like characters from a novel, familiar faces appear throughout the exhibition… and like characters from novels they may well be based on real people. Either way, Lynette’s work is highly personal and she does not often want to sell. Fly In League With the Night Owl is a rare opportunity to see the work she has decided to share of which much is now privately owned.
The exhibition runs from 24th November to 26th February 2023, open daily 10AM - 6PM.
Don’t forget to collect your Yamos on your way in…
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has worked with curators Andrea Schlieker and Isabella Maidment to create a sequence of poetic encounters in the upper galleries at Tate Britain, her paintings exist in dialogue with each other organised not chronologically like a conventional survey show, rather, mixed so that paintings from different parts of her oeuvre meet in the sequence of rooms.
Lynette’s paintings are figurative, predominantly portraits, her characters speak to us, almost literally. They seem to engage us. She has caught them at the moment of speech, laughter, dance or song, there are moments of contemplation, celebration, despair and joy.
Caught in a Daumier-caricature-like fashion, expressions and gestures are brought to life formed with the paint. Her style is distinctive and has developed considerably from the cartoonish, and slightly sinister FIRST (2003), painted for her graduate show at the Royal Academy which hangs in the first room.
Lynette has said historical paintings are an inspiration for her work, citing Sickert and Sargent as informing her practice. She references Sargent, in the red dressing gown in FIRST which, as with many of Lynette’s motifs, reappears worn by another man in Any Number of Preoccupations (2010) a homage to Singer Sargent’s Doctor Pozzi at Home (1881). Her quick intuitive brushwork also evokes the painting of Walter Sickert, particularly his more expressive later work, toward the end of his career with the invention of better photography, Sickert worked from news cuttings, a practice that may have influenced the shift in Lynette's work; from painting from life to using scrapbooks and archives of found images. Her titles are not descriptive but reference her poetry and writing—a deliberate decision to let the viewer bring their own meaning to the pieces.
Lynette is an exceptional painter, even if the poetry of her work doesn’t speak to you it is worth looking closely to see her mastery of tone, colour and light, simply try and take a photo of one of her paintings, the camera will struggle to find the correct exposure, but the picture will be perfectly formed in each incarnation, showing a complete mastery of light. The confidence of her brushwork is inspiring, in fact it was the simplicity in which she conveyed a man pulling on a sock in The Generosity (2010) that struck Tate’s conservationists and led to the gallery acquiring the piece for their collection.
Remarkably, these intimate portraits are not close friends, lovers or family members. The characters that reach out of pictorial space—that command us with their gaze and whose expressions reveal so much of who they are—are completely fabricated. They are figments of Lynette’s imagination, informed by the found images from her sketchbooks. Sometimes the paintings are allegorical, people appear with animals… foxes, dogs or owls, other times the painting is so real and tangible it feels like one of our own memories.
Lynette trained at Central Saint Martins before moving to Falmouth, Cornwall. It was away from London that she found she was more interested in the imaginative possibilities of painting itself, than the portrayal of reality. The people in her paintings are born of the paint as much as the mind. There are no preparatory drawings; Lynette works out everything on the canvas. Inspiration comes from within, an intuitive form of expression that results in recurring motifs—like talismans—the striped top is something that reappears in her work and she has said she feels she must paint it at the start of any new project, although it appears only once in this exhibition. However, another motif, the fox or mink tippet can be seen again, draped over the shoulder of a dancer or hanging from the neck in a portrait.
Interestingly, men and women never appear together in her work. It is something she said she has no interest in depicting. Though she paints men and women separately, her groups are usually male. Dancers taking a break, boys perhaps dressing after a swim, her scenes are intentionally difficult to decipher, with no clues to time period or location. Curiously, a diptych features a portrait of a young man and woman, though appearing side by side they are separated by their individual canvases. Another portrait of a man in the same room has the title, Few reasons left to like you.’ Is there a tension between man and woman or are they just inhabiting separate realms which come together only privately?
Lynette’s work is very intimate despite the people she paints not existing. We wonder to what extent these people are imagined? They are like characters from a novel, familiar faces appear throughout the exhibition… and like characters from novels they may well be based on real people. Either way, Lynette’s work is highly personal and she does not often want to sell. Fly In League With the Night Owl is a rare opportunity to see the work she has decided to share of which much is now privately owned.
The exhibition runs from 24th November to 26th February 2023, open daily 10AM - 6PM.
Don’t forget to collect your Yamos on your way in…
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has worked with curators Andrea Schlieker and Isabella Maidment to create a sequence of poetic encounters in the upper galleries at Tate Britain, her paintings exist in dialogue with each other organised not chronologically like a conventional survey show, rather, mixed so that paintings from different parts of her oeuvre meet in the sequence of rooms.
Lynette’s paintings are figurative, predominantly portraits, her characters speak to us, almost literally. They seem to engage us. She has caught them at the moment of speech, laughter, dance or song, there are moments of contemplation, celebration, despair and joy.
Caught in a Daumier-caricature-like fashion, expressions and gestures are brought to life formed with the paint. Her style is distinctive and has developed considerably from the cartoonish, and slightly sinister FIRST (2003), painted for her graduate show at the Royal Academy which hangs in the first room.
Lynette has said historical paintings are an inspiration for her work, citing Sickert and Sargent as informing her practice. She references Sargent, in the red dressing gown in FIRST which, as with many of Lynette’s motifs, reappears worn by another man in Any Number of Preoccupations (2010) a homage to Singer Sargent’s Doctor Pozzi at Home (1881). Her quick intuitive brushwork also evokes the painting of Walter Sickert, particularly his more expressive later work, toward the end of his career with the invention of better photography, Sickert worked from news cuttings, a practice that may have influenced the shift in Lynette's work; from painting from life to using scrapbooks and archives of found images. Her titles are not descriptive but reference her poetry and writing—a deliberate decision to let the viewer bring their own meaning to the pieces.
Lynette is an exceptional painter, even if the poetry of her work doesn’t speak to you it is worth looking closely to see her mastery of tone, colour and light, simply try and take a photo of one of her paintings, the camera will struggle to find the correct exposure, but the picture will be perfectly formed in each incarnation, showing a complete mastery of light. The confidence of her brushwork is inspiring, in fact it was the simplicity in which she conveyed a man pulling on a sock in The Generosity (2010) that struck Tate’s conservationists and led to the gallery acquiring the piece for their collection.
Remarkably, these intimate portraits are not close friends, lovers or family members. The characters that reach out of pictorial space—that command us with their gaze and whose expressions reveal so much of who they are—are completely fabricated. They are figments of Lynette’s imagination, informed by the found images from her sketchbooks. Sometimes the paintings are allegorical, people appear with animals… foxes, dogs or owls, other times the painting is so real and tangible it feels like one of our own memories.
Lynette trained at Central Saint Martins before moving to Falmouth, Cornwall. It was away from London that she found she was more interested in the imaginative possibilities of painting itself, than the portrayal of reality. The people in her paintings are born of the paint as much as the mind. There are no preparatory drawings; Lynette works out everything on the canvas. Inspiration comes from within, an intuitive form of expression that results in recurring motifs—like talismans—the striped top is something that reappears in her work and she has said she feels she must paint it at the start of any new project, although it appears only once in this exhibition. However, another motif, the fox or mink tippet can be seen again, draped over the shoulder of a dancer or hanging from the neck in a portrait.
Interestingly, men and women never appear together in her work. It is something she said she has no interest in depicting. Though she paints men and women separately, her groups are usually male. Dancers taking a break, boys perhaps dressing after a swim, her scenes are intentionally difficult to decipher, with no clues to time period or location. Curiously, a diptych features a portrait of a young man and woman, though appearing side by side they are separated by their individual canvases. Another portrait of a man in the same room has the title, Few reasons left to like you.’ Is there a tension between man and woman or are they just inhabiting separate realms which come together only privately?
Lynette’s work is very intimate despite the people she paints not existing. We wonder to what extent these people are imagined? They are like characters from a novel, familiar faces appear throughout the exhibition… and like characters from novels they may well be based on real people. Either way, Lynette’s work is highly personal and she does not often want to sell. Fly In League With the Night Owl is a rare opportunity to see the work she has decided to share of which much is now privately owned.
The exhibition runs from 24th November to 26th February 2023, open daily 10AM - 6PM.
Don’t forget to collect your Yamos on your way in…
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has worked with curators Andrea Schlieker and Isabella Maidment to create a sequence of poetic encounters in the upper galleries at Tate Britain, her paintings exist in dialogue with each other organised not chronologically like a conventional survey show, rather, mixed so that paintings from different parts of her oeuvre meet in the sequence of rooms.
Lynette’s paintings are figurative, predominantly portraits, her characters speak to us, almost literally. They seem to engage us. She has caught them at the moment of speech, laughter, dance or song, there are moments of contemplation, celebration, despair and joy.
Caught in a Daumier-caricature-like fashion, expressions and gestures are brought to life formed with the paint. Her style is distinctive and has developed considerably from the cartoonish, and slightly sinister FIRST (2003), painted for her graduate show at the Royal Academy which hangs in the first room.
Lynette has said historical paintings are an inspiration for her work, citing Sickert and Sargent as informing her practice. She references Sargent, in the red dressing gown in FIRST which, as with many of Lynette’s motifs, reappears worn by another man in Any Number of Preoccupations (2010) a homage to Singer Sargent’s Doctor Pozzi at Home (1881). Her quick intuitive brushwork also evokes the painting of Walter Sickert, particularly his more expressive later work, toward the end of his career with the invention of better photography, Sickert worked from news cuttings, a practice that may have influenced the shift in Lynette's work; from painting from life to using scrapbooks and archives of found images. Her titles are not descriptive but reference her poetry and writing—a deliberate decision to let the viewer bring their own meaning to the pieces.
Lynette is an exceptional painter, even if the poetry of her work doesn’t speak to you it is worth looking closely to see her mastery of tone, colour and light, simply try and take a photo of one of her paintings, the camera will struggle to find the correct exposure, but the picture will be perfectly formed in each incarnation, showing a complete mastery of light. The confidence of her brushwork is inspiring, in fact it was the simplicity in which she conveyed a man pulling on a sock in The Generosity (2010) that struck Tate’s conservationists and led to the gallery acquiring the piece for their collection.
Remarkably, these intimate portraits are not close friends, lovers or family members. The characters that reach out of pictorial space—that command us with their gaze and whose expressions reveal so much of who they are—are completely fabricated. They are figments of Lynette’s imagination, informed by the found images from her sketchbooks. Sometimes the paintings are allegorical, people appear with animals… foxes, dogs or owls, other times the painting is so real and tangible it feels like one of our own memories.
Lynette trained at Central Saint Martins before moving to Falmouth, Cornwall. It was away from London that she found she was more interested in the imaginative possibilities of painting itself, than the portrayal of reality. The people in her paintings are born of the paint as much as the mind. There are no preparatory drawings; Lynette works out everything on the canvas. Inspiration comes from within, an intuitive form of expression that results in recurring motifs—like talismans—the striped top is something that reappears in her work and she has said she feels she must paint it at the start of any new project, although it appears only once in this exhibition. However, another motif, the fox or mink tippet can be seen again, draped over the shoulder of a dancer or hanging from the neck in a portrait.
Interestingly, men and women never appear together in her work. It is something she said she has no interest in depicting. Though she paints men and women separately, her groups are usually male. Dancers taking a break, boys perhaps dressing after a swim, her scenes are intentionally difficult to decipher, with no clues to time period or location. Curiously, a diptych features a portrait of a young man and woman, though appearing side by side they are separated by their individual canvases. Another portrait of a man in the same room has the title, Few reasons left to like you.’ Is there a tension between man and woman or are they just inhabiting separate realms which come together only privately?
Lynette’s work is very intimate despite the people she paints not existing. We wonder to what extent these people are imagined? They are like characters from a novel, familiar faces appear throughout the exhibition… and like characters from novels they may well be based on real people. Either way, Lynette’s work is highly personal and she does not often want to sell. Fly In League With the Night Owl is a rare opportunity to see the work she has decided to share of which much is now privately owned.
The exhibition runs from 24th November to 26th February 2023, open daily 10AM - 6PM.
Don’t forget to collect your Yamos on your way in…
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has worked with curators Andrea Schlieker and Isabella Maidment to create a sequence of poetic encounters in the upper galleries at Tate Britain, her paintings exist in dialogue with each other organised not chronologically like a conventional survey show, rather, mixed so that paintings from different parts of her oeuvre meet in the sequence of rooms.
Lynette’s paintings are figurative, predominantly portraits, her characters speak to us, almost literally. They seem to engage us. She has caught them at the moment of speech, laughter, dance or song, there are moments of contemplation, celebration, despair and joy.
Caught in a Daumier-caricature-like fashion, expressions and gestures are brought to life formed with the paint. Her style is distinctive and has developed considerably from the cartoonish, and slightly sinister FIRST (2003), painted for her graduate show at the Royal Academy which hangs in the first room.
Lynette has said historical paintings are an inspiration for her work, citing Sickert and Sargent as informing her practice. She references Sargent, in the red dressing gown in FIRST which, as with many of Lynette’s motifs, reappears worn by another man in Any Number of Preoccupations (2010) a homage to Singer Sargent’s Doctor Pozzi at Home (1881). Her quick intuitive brushwork also evokes the painting of Walter Sickert, particularly his more expressive later work, toward the end of his career with the invention of better photography, Sickert worked from news cuttings, a practice that may have influenced the shift in Lynette's work; from painting from life to using scrapbooks and archives of found images. Her titles are not descriptive but reference her poetry and writing—a deliberate decision to let the viewer bring their own meaning to the pieces.
Lynette is an exceptional painter, even if the poetry of her work doesn’t speak to you it is worth looking closely to see her mastery of tone, colour and light, simply try and take a photo of one of her paintings, the camera will struggle to find the correct exposure, but the picture will be perfectly formed in each incarnation, showing a complete mastery of light. The confidence of her brushwork is inspiring, in fact it was the simplicity in which she conveyed a man pulling on a sock in The Generosity (2010) that struck Tate’s conservationists and led to the gallery acquiring the piece for their collection.
Remarkably, these intimate portraits are not close friends, lovers or family members. The characters that reach out of pictorial space—that command us with their gaze and whose expressions reveal so much of who they are—are completely fabricated. They are figments of Lynette’s imagination, informed by the found images from her sketchbooks. Sometimes the paintings are allegorical, people appear with animals… foxes, dogs or owls, other times the painting is so real and tangible it feels like one of our own memories.
Lynette trained at Central Saint Martins before moving to Falmouth, Cornwall. It was away from London that she found she was more interested in the imaginative possibilities of painting itself, than the portrayal of reality. The people in her paintings are born of the paint as much as the mind. There are no preparatory drawings; Lynette works out everything on the canvas. Inspiration comes from within, an intuitive form of expression that results in recurring motifs—like talismans—the striped top is something that reappears in her work and she has said she feels she must paint it at the start of any new project, although it appears only once in this exhibition. However, another motif, the fox or mink tippet can be seen again, draped over the shoulder of a dancer or hanging from the neck in a portrait.
Interestingly, men and women never appear together in her work. It is something she said she has no interest in depicting. Though she paints men and women separately, her groups are usually male. Dancers taking a break, boys perhaps dressing after a swim, her scenes are intentionally difficult to decipher, with no clues to time period or location. Curiously, a diptych features a portrait of a young man and woman, though appearing side by side they are separated by their individual canvases. Another portrait of a man in the same room has the title, Few reasons left to like you.’ Is there a tension between man and woman or are they just inhabiting separate realms which come together only privately?
Lynette’s work is very intimate despite the people she paints not existing. We wonder to what extent these people are imagined? They are like characters from a novel, familiar faces appear throughout the exhibition… and like characters from novels they may well be based on real people. Either way, Lynette’s work is highly personal and she does not often want to sell. Fly In League With the Night Owl is a rare opportunity to see the work she has decided to share of which much is now privately owned.
The exhibition runs from 24th November to 26th February 2023, open daily 10AM - 6PM.
Don’t forget to collect your Yamos on your way in…
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has worked with curators Andrea Schlieker and Isabella Maidment to create a sequence of poetic encounters in the upper galleries at Tate Britain, her paintings exist in dialogue with each other organised not chronologically like a conventional survey show, rather, mixed so that paintings from different parts of her oeuvre meet in the sequence of rooms.
Lynette’s paintings are figurative, predominantly portraits, her characters speak to us, almost literally. They seem to engage us. She has caught them at the moment of speech, laughter, dance or song, there are moments of contemplation, celebration, despair and joy.
Caught in a Daumier-caricature-like fashion, expressions and gestures are brought to life formed with the paint. Her style is distinctive and has developed considerably from the cartoonish, and slightly sinister FIRST (2003), painted for her graduate show at the Royal Academy which hangs in the first room.
Lynette has said historical paintings are an inspiration for her work, citing Sickert and Sargent as informing her practice. She references Sargent, in the red dressing gown in FIRST which, as with many of Lynette’s motifs, reappears worn by another man in Any Number of Preoccupations (2010) a homage to Singer Sargent’s Doctor Pozzi at Home (1881). Her quick intuitive brushwork also evokes the painting of Walter Sickert, particularly his more expressive later work, toward the end of his career with the invention of better photography, Sickert worked from news cuttings, a practice that may have influenced the shift in Lynette's work; from painting from life to using scrapbooks and archives of found images. Her titles are not descriptive but reference her poetry and writing—a deliberate decision to let the viewer bring their own meaning to the pieces.
Lynette is an exceptional painter, even if the poetry of her work doesn’t speak to you it is worth looking closely to see her mastery of tone, colour and light, simply try and take a photo of one of her paintings, the camera will struggle to find the correct exposure, but the picture will be perfectly formed in each incarnation, showing a complete mastery of light. The confidence of her brushwork is inspiring, in fact it was the simplicity in which she conveyed a man pulling on a sock in The Generosity (2010) that struck Tate’s conservationists and led to the gallery acquiring the piece for their collection.
Remarkably, these intimate portraits are not close friends, lovers or family members. The characters that reach out of pictorial space—that command us with their gaze and whose expressions reveal so much of who they are—are completely fabricated. They are figments of Lynette’s imagination, informed by the found images from her sketchbooks. Sometimes the paintings are allegorical, people appear with animals… foxes, dogs or owls, other times the painting is so real and tangible it feels like one of our own memories.
Lynette trained at Central Saint Martins before moving to Falmouth, Cornwall. It was away from London that she found she was more interested in the imaginative possibilities of painting itself, than the portrayal of reality. The people in her paintings are born of the paint as much as the mind. There are no preparatory drawings; Lynette works out everything on the canvas. Inspiration comes from within, an intuitive form of expression that results in recurring motifs—like talismans—the striped top is something that reappears in her work and she has said she feels she must paint it at the start of any new project, although it appears only once in this exhibition. However, another motif, the fox or mink tippet can be seen again, draped over the shoulder of a dancer or hanging from the neck in a portrait.
Interestingly, men and women never appear together in her work. It is something she said she has no interest in depicting. Though she paints men and women separately, her groups are usually male. Dancers taking a break, boys perhaps dressing after a swim, her scenes are intentionally difficult to decipher, with no clues to time period or location. Curiously, a diptych features a portrait of a young man and woman, though appearing side by side they are separated by their individual canvases. Another portrait of a man in the same room has the title, Few reasons left to like you.’ Is there a tension between man and woman or are they just inhabiting separate realms which come together only privately?
Lynette’s work is very intimate despite the people she paints not existing. We wonder to what extent these people are imagined? They are like characters from a novel, familiar faces appear throughout the exhibition… and like characters from novels they may well be based on real people. Either way, Lynette’s work is highly personal and she does not often want to sell. Fly In League With the Night Owl is a rare opportunity to see the work she has decided to share of which much is now privately owned.
The exhibition runs from 24th November to 26th February 2023, open daily 10AM - 6PM.
Don’t forget to collect your Yamos on your way in…
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has worked with curators Andrea Schlieker and Isabella Maidment to create a sequence of poetic encounters in the upper galleries at Tate Britain, her paintings exist in dialogue with each other organised not chronologically like a conventional survey show, rather, mixed so that paintings from different parts of her oeuvre meet in the sequence of rooms.
Lynette’s paintings are figurative, predominantly portraits, her characters speak to us, almost literally. They seem to engage us. She has caught them at the moment of speech, laughter, dance or song, there are moments of contemplation, celebration, despair and joy.
Caught in a Daumier-caricature-like fashion, expressions and gestures are brought to life formed with the paint. Her style is distinctive and has developed considerably from the cartoonish, and slightly sinister FIRST (2003), painted for her graduate show at the Royal Academy which hangs in the first room.
Lynette has said historical paintings are an inspiration for her work, citing Sickert and Sargent as informing her practice. She references Sargent, in the red dressing gown in FIRST which, as with many of Lynette’s motifs, reappears worn by another man in Any Number of Preoccupations (2010) a homage to Singer Sargent’s Doctor Pozzi at Home (1881). Her quick intuitive brushwork also evokes the painting of Walter Sickert, particularly his more expressive later work, toward the end of his career with the invention of better photography, Sickert worked from news cuttings, a practice that may have influenced the shift in Lynette's work; from painting from life to using scrapbooks and archives of found images. Her titles are not descriptive but reference her poetry and writing—a deliberate decision to let the viewer bring their own meaning to the pieces.
Lynette is an exceptional painter, even if the poetry of her work doesn’t speak to you it is worth looking closely to see her mastery of tone, colour and light, simply try and take a photo of one of her paintings, the camera will struggle to find the correct exposure, but the picture will be perfectly formed in each incarnation, showing a complete mastery of light. The confidence of her brushwork is inspiring, in fact it was the simplicity in which she conveyed a man pulling on a sock in The Generosity (2010) that struck Tate’s conservationists and led to the gallery acquiring the piece for their collection.
Remarkably, these intimate portraits are not close friends, lovers or family members. The characters that reach out of pictorial space—that command us with their gaze and whose expressions reveal so much of who they are—are completely fabricated. They are figments of Lynette’s imagination, informed by the found images from her sketchbooks. Sometimes the paintings are allegorical, people appear with animals… foxes, dogs or owls, other times the painting is so real and tangible it feels like one of our own memories.
Lynette trained at Central Saint Martins before moving to Falmouth, Cornwall. It was away from London that she found she was more interested in the imaginative possibilities of painting itself, than the portrayal of reality. The people in her paintings are born of the paint as much as the mind. There are no preparatory drawings; Lynette works out everything on the canvas. Inspiration comes from within, an intuitive form of expression that results in recurring motifs—like talismans—the striped top is something that reappears in her work and she has said she feels she must paint it at the start of any new project, although it appears only once in this exhibition. However, another motif, the fox or mink tippet can be seen again, draped over the shoulder of a dancer or hanging from the neck in a portrait.
Interestingly, men and women never appear together in her work. It is something she said she has no interest in depicting. Though she paints men and women separately, her groups are usually male. Dancers taking a break, boys perhaps dressing after a swim, her scenes are intentionally difficult to decipher, with no clues to time period or location. Curiously, a diptych features a portrait of a young man and woman, though appearing side by side they are separated by their individual canvases. Another portrait of a man in the same room has the title, Few reasons left to like you.’ Is there a tension between man and woman or are they just inhabiting separate realms which come together only privately?
Lynette’s work is very intimate despite the people she paints not existing. We wonder to what extent these people are imagined? They are like characters from a novel, familiar faces appear throughout the exhibition… and like characters from novels they may well be based on real people. Either way, Lynette’s work is highly personal and she does not often want to sell. Fly In League With the Night Owl is a rare opportunity to see the work she has decided to share of which much is now privately owned.
The exhibition runs from 24th November to 26th February 2023, open daily 10AM - 6PM.
Don’t forget to collect your Yamos on your way in…
