Lynette Yiadom-Boakye British, b. 1977

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye was born in 1977 in London. After completing her foundation course at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, she studied for her degree at Falmouth College of Arts and an MA at the Royal Academy Schools. She won an Arts Foundation award for painting in 2006, the Pinchuk Foundation Future Generation Prize in 2012, and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2013.

Yiadom-Boakye creates her figures from imagination and memory, deliberately distancing the viewer from any personal narrative, time and place. This ambiguity allows her to make a study of the mechanics of painting, and working quickly with oils she typically finishes a canvas in a day. She has had several solo shows at major galleries, including at The Serpentine in 2015, and her work is part of institutional collections such as the Tate and the V & A in London, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

She currently lives and works in London.