Six Birds in the Bush is a stunning example of the artist’s technical skill with paint and her ability to capture the profound emotional mood of her characters. The record-setting painting depicts a fictitious man gazing out absentmindedly towards the viewer, as though caught in mid-thought. With impressionistic brushwork, the work is devoid of any markers of specific time or place, encouraging the viewer to add their own personal interpretations to the story. Writing is also central to her practice and the works are given poetic titles, such as this one. “I write about the things I can’t paint and paint the things I can’t write about,” she once said.
The work was included in the artist’s Tate Britain survey earlier this year. “Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Fly In League With The Night” featured some 70 works from 2003 to the present day, forming a powerful and beautiful ode to painting.
