Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
PainterKnown for:
fictional figurative painting; the invented Black portrait subjects
Education:
Central Saint Martins; Falmouth College of Arts (BA, 2000); Royal Academy Schools (MA, painting, 2003)
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye paints fictional Black figures - invented from her imagination rather than from observation or photographs - in loose, quickly executed brushwork that draws on the compositional conventions of eighteenth and nineteenth-century portrait painting. She typically works on a canvas for a single day, discarding those she considers failures and keeping only those she is satisfied with. She was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2013 and her retrospective at Tate Modern in 2020 was among the museum's most visited of that year.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's Gear List(2)
Generic
Connection Source
TateInterview
Connection note
Works wet-on-wet (alla prima), typically completing paintings in a single day; never uses ready-made black, mixing blues and browns instead
Product description
Oil paint — pigment suspended in a drying oil, typically linseed — has been the dominant painting medium since the fifteenth century. It dries slowly, allowing extended blending, and produces a rich, luminous surface. Available from dozens of manufacturers at student through professional grades.
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Last updated March 20, 2026
