Lynette Yiadom Boakye (B. 1977)

‘I always loved figurative painting and I've always wondered what that power was that I kept coming back to and I realized it was less about individuals than about how they had been pictorially constructed. What was it about their eyes? How was that achieved through this painting?’ (L.Y.-Boayke, quoted in J. Higgie, 'A Life in a Day: The Fictitious Portraits of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye', in Frieze, issue 146, April 2012, http:/www.frieze.com/issue/article/a-life-in-a-day/ [accessed 6 January 2014]).

Strikingly composed, Obelisk, 2005, is an arresting example of the unique figurative practice for which London-based artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has received international acclaim. Executed in the artist’s signature palette of ebony, mahogany and off-white, the central figure dominates the canvas with a statuesque sense of poise. Obelisk derives its title from the figure’s upright tapered posture and the structural base created by the combination of the woman’s legs with those of the stool. Fixing the viewer with an intense gaze, Yiadom-Boakye’s imagined protagonist embodies the beguiling sense of timelessness for which the artist’s work has been universally
celebrated. Recalling the figurative style of Edouard Manet whilst adopting an almost Abstract Expressionist approach to the picture plane, Obelisk is both bold and subtle, intimate and magisterial.