Laylah Ali

Laylah Ali is a modern artist who is known for her small caricatures and comic book like images.  Ali creates her work with such precision and attention, that the images pop out at you with how much details and life are in the drawings.  Her works are small, figurative, gouache paintings on paper, and it takes her months to create one single piece of art.  The time and care she puts into each work is what makes her a great artist.

Her paintings resemble comic-book serials, but also contain stylistic references to hieroglyphics and American folk-art traditions.  This is what makes her work unique above other works is the stylistic way she creates her characters and the stories that go with them.  Her works are untitled, which helps the viewer come up with their own story to the painting, as well as maybe see what story it may have been derived from.  Ali’s works have a lot of emotional tension that result in juxtaposing brightly colored scenes with dark, often violent subject matter.  This results in speaking of political resistance, social relationships, and betrayal.  These are all prominent themes in her works.

Her most famous body of work deals with the brown-skinned and gender-neutral Greenheads (pictured below).  Her most recent portraits though deal with more abstract biomorphic images.  Ali allows her characters in her paintings to be seen with and doing everyday activities such as dodge balls and sneakers.  This type of work leaves room for the imagination of the viewer to decide what is going on in her works.  This is what makes her work is modern and defines her as a fine artist.        

Untitled (Greenheads) 1998

Untitled 2002

Untitled 2005

Untitled 2007