Cathy's Art Diary

Beautiful exhibition at Tate Britain of work by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. This show has had an interesting history. It initially opened just before lockdown in 2020. It came back in Spring 2021, when I went to see it, and has returned again presumably to give it a better chance to be seen by more people. I won’t review it again you can read my previous blog post but I thought it might be interesting to record my second impressions. I was struck by the artists clever use of white paint. There are obvious things like shirts, socks and cigarettes but also stark highlights on skin and clothing. Having just done a course on Whistler and Sickert I couldn’t help to view through their lens. There was a picture of a man in a white shirt which screamed “Symphony in White No 1” at me for the amazing array of colours in the white. As many works were dark faces against dark backgrounds I did think of Sickert and his love of painting in shades of mud. I’ll certainly be continuing to look out ...

Interesting display at the Fitzwilliam Museum highlighting the acquisition of a set of etchings by contemporary artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. This set of prints “First Flight” are delicate imagined portraits of black sitters which were displayed here with prints and drawings by Rembrandt and Van Dyck. I loved the exhibition of her work earlier in the year at Tate Britain which I believe is going to be repeated as it was disrupted by Covid. Her work stood up well to the two earlier iconic artists but in technique and composition. It was a good way for the museum to show some of their works on paper in a different context and to draw contemporary parallels. Closes 20 February 2022

Beautiful exhibition at Tate Britain of work by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye dating from her time at the Royal Academy schools in 2003 to pictures painted during the Covid lockdowns. This was a beautifully hung show with little explanation and themed rather than chronological rooms. It just left the pictures and the people in them to talk to each other. The works were all figurative, either individual figures or groups. She captures gestures and posture beautifully in loose paint work. Yiadom-Boakye is also a poet and calls the titles of her works “an extra brush stroke”. They are enigmatic and make you start to build stories about the people in your mind. You see echoes of the history of art without them being derivative. I felt like I had met a lot of interesting new people in this show.   Closed 31 May 2021 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard

Nice exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery of paintings my Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. The pictures were large imagined pictures of people often with a dark undefined background. I loved one “4am Friday” where the figure dissolves into the background which sets off the white stripes of his t-shirt. The pictures had a Velazquez feel with the loose brush work and dark palette. The first picture you seen is a wonderful almost life sized back of a dancer which is so strong. I loved one of a man with a parrot. He is so dark and almost monotone then the parrot is a blaze of colour.   My favourite though is a figure of a man sitting in a red dressing gown with had a real feeling of Sergeant’s “Doctor Pozzi” which was in the recent National Portrait Gallery show. Review Times