Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Fly In League With The Night

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye : Fly In League With The Night celebrates the work of one of the most significant and acclaimed figurative painters of her generation. Fact and fiction fuse in Yiadom-Boakye's paintings : they appear to be portraits, yet the people she depicts are not real but invented. Created from a composite of found images and her own imagination, her characters seem to exist outside of a specific time or place : they feel at once familiar yet mysterious.
This ambiguity resonates again in the enigmatic titles she gives to her artworks. The artist is also a writer of poetry and prose, and for her, the two forms of creativity complement each other : "The things I can't paint, I write, and the things I can't write, I paint." This perceptive and engaging publication provides a comprehensive account of Yiadom-Boakye's practice over the past two decades.
With contributions by the celebrated poet Elizabeth Alexander and curators Andrea Schlieker and Isabella Maidment, alongside new writing by Yiadom-Boakye, Fly In League With The Nigbt reflects the dual aspects of the artist's career as both a painter and a writer and offers an intimate insight into her creative process. Yiadom-Boakye's work is a celebration of the vital importance and critical significance of painting today.
"The best I can hope for", she has said, "is that people feel perhaps a little of what I feel, what I love, and why I love it. And how that love keeps me going."