Lynette Yiadem-Boakye: Bracken or Moss

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 The Background:

Lynette Yiadem-Boakye was born in London in 1977 and currently still lives there. She has had many awards and accomplishments throughout her life relating to Art such as being the 2018 recipient of the Carnegie Prize and being short-listed for the 2013 Turner Prize. She is apart of many institutional collections such as the Art Gallery of Southern Australia and the Yale Center for British Art, Connecticut. 

The Artwork:

The type of artwork that Yiadem-Boakye does is mainly oil paintings. Her main area of expertise are character studies where she combines dark hues and characters that are posed in specific, elegant poses. As she described in an interview, she likes to think of her characters are "suggestions of people...They don’t share our concerns or anxieties. They are somewhere else altogether.” Yiadem-Boakye believes that the lack of a fixed narrative makes it so the interpretation of the art is up to the viewer and their imagination can run wild. Most artist take a lot of time to finish a piece but Yiadem-Boakye usually finishes hers in one day to capture a single moment. 

Bracken or Moss (2012) Lynette Yiadem-Boakye
                                          Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/clairity/39942599222



The piece that is shown, is titled Bracken or Moss which was completed in 2012. In this piece, the eyes of the character posed are one of the main aspects of this piece. The deep shadows of the characters skin along with the dark pupils create an astounding contracts of the white in the eyes. When looking at this piece of artwork, you mainly focus on the features of the face and the outline of the body. When you see this piece in person, when you move around at different angles, the light in the canvas will shift. When the light on the canvas shifts, the features of the character's face are more visible. It is said that the painting suggests that, "the act of looking is equally as profound as what you see."

The Awards:

Carnegie Prize of 2018
Short-listed for the Turner Prize in 2013
Arts Foundation Fellowship
Pinchuk Foundation Future Generation Prize
Next Generation Prize from the New Museum of Contemporary Art
South Bank Sky Arts award for Visual Art



Sources:

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