This beautiful volume celebrates and explores Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s enigmatic paintings. Based in London, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has emerged in recent years as a major talent in the international art scene, winning widespread acclaim for her large-scale, luminous portraits. Working in a luxuriously dark, muted palette offset by bursts of radiant color, Yiadom-Boakye paints subjects from her imagination, whose stories she sometimes elaborates through short fiction. Whether with a shy smile, leering, or evading one’s gaze, Yiadom-Boakye’s subjects consistently confront the viewer with a beguiling sense of intimacy and the implication of larger, hidden life. This volume surveys the artist’s remarkable career to date through beautiful, full-page illustrations. Also featured are two critical essays that assess the artist’s practice and distinctive approach to portraiture, an interview with the artist, as well as short stories by the artist that give life to her paintings. "This compelling volume celebrates, explores, and documents Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's practice over the past decade."


—Culture Type
"Well worth the wait."


—Culture Type
"In the first monograph on Yiadom-Boakye, [the artist’s figures] inhabit numerous crisp, full-page illustrations that do full justice to their subtleties."


—Faye Hirsch, The New York Times Sunday Book Review