Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (born in 1977) is shaking up figurative painting with a boldness that will leave you speechless. This British artist of Ghanaian descent crashes into our stuffy institutions like a punch in a gallery of Victorian portraits. I’m going to tell you why she’s one of the most fascinating artists of our time and why her work demands your attention, whether you like it or not.
First thing to note: she paints characters who don’t exist. Yes, you read that right. In a world obsessed with reality, selfies, and forced authenticity, Yiadom-Boakye creates fictional beings with a technical mastery that would make Velázquez blush. Her imaginary portraits are more lifelike than reality, more authentic than your retouched Instagram photos. That’s where her genius lies: she makes us believe in the existence of people who have never existed.
Take No Such Luxury (2012), a monumental canvas that draws you in as soon as you step into the room. A seated figure in front of a cup of coffee stares at you with an intensity that pins you to the spot. The character is undeniably present but entirely free from social conventions, racial expectations, or gender constraints. It’s a masterful tour de force. As Serge Gainsbourg sang in Je suis venu te dire que je m’en vais, there’s a similar tension between presence and absence, between what is shown and what is suggested.
Yiadom-Boakye’s palette is a symphony of browns. She masters shades like no one else, creating a depth that pulls you into her paintings. Her dark backgrounds are not mere decoration; they’re the stage where a silent drama unfolds, a meditation on existence itself. It’s Sartre in painting, my friends, pure existentialism on canvas.
And then there’s her manipulation of time. Her characters float in an eternal present, deliberately disconnected from any specific temporality. No shoes that could date the work, no accessories that anchor it to a period. It’s visual Proust, a quest for pictorial time where past and present blend into a single eternity.
Her titles are poems in themselves, enigmatic and evocative like Rimbaud. A Passion Like No Other, The Much-Vaunted Air, To Tell Them Where It’s Got To—they’re fragments of narratives that exist only in our imagination. Like in La Javanaise, where Gainsbourg plays with words to create an alternate reality, Yiadom-Boakye uses these titles as musical notes in a visual score.
But it’s not just about aesthetics. Her work is profoundly political, even though she rejects the banner-waving role some would thrust upon her. By painting Black figures in the grand tradition of European oil painting, she doesn’t ask for permission to enter the artistic canon—she claims her place, period. It’s Fanon in painting, a decolonization of the artistic imagination that doesn’t bother with justifications.
Take A Concentration (2018), where four Black male dancers occupy the space with a grace that defies stereotypes. It’s a sharp rebuttal to centuries of Western art relegating Black bodies to the margins. Like Simone de Beauvoir deconstructing the myths of femininity, Yiadom-Boakye deconstructs racial representations with devastating subtlety.
Her technique is impeccable. She masters chiaroscuro like the Dutch masters but bends it to her own ends. Her brushstrokes are confident, precise, free of unnecessary flourishes. It’s Cézanne on acid, painting that knows its roots but has no intention of staying within prescribed boundaries.
Perhaps most fascinating is her treatment of light. In works like Complication (2013), she creates atmospheres where the luminosity seems to emanate from the characters themselves. It’s Caravaggio remixed for the 21st century, with an acute awareness of contemporary issues of representation.
What makes my blood boil is hearing some critics talk about her work solely in terms of identity. Yes, she paints Black figures. So what? Rembrandt painted Dutch people; no one reduces him to that. Her art transcends these simplistic categorizations, just as a Gainsbourg melody transcends the lyrics to reach something deeper.
Yiadom-Boakye is an artist who understands that painting is not dead, despite what some might claim. She breathes new life and relevance into it. Like Nietzsche proclaiming the death of God to affirm the need for new values, she proclaims the death of old pictorial codes to reinvent painting.
What makes Lynette Yiadom-Boakye so powerful is her ability to create a parallel world that makes us question our own. Her imaginary characters are more alive than many portraits of real people. That’s her magic: the ability to transcend reality and reach a deeper truth. Her paintings tell us they’re here while reminding us of their fictive nature, a paradox that gives them their immense power.