An opulent ode to window gazing—the ultimate quarantine activity—by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. The British artist creates evocative figurative works, conjured up from images in scrapbooks, drawings and her own imagination, and usually depicting fictional men and women of colour. The history of painting and the material qualities of oil paint are, she has said, just as important to her oeuvre as her chosen subjects: “People are tempted to politicize the fact that I paint black figures, and the complexity of this is an essential part of the work. But my starting point is always the language of painting itself and how that relates to the subject matter.”
