The T List: Painting Herself Into the Canon

As an art student at the University of Brighton and then the Royal Drawing School in London, the now 28-year-old artist Somaya Critchlow noticed a dearth of depictions of Black women in Western art. “I was feeling isolated, so I thought I would confront myself,” she says of deciding to draw her own body. “As soon as I started drawing myself nude, I started to enjoy myself.” These self-portraits soon evolved into a broader celebration of Black femininity, one showcased in her first monograph, “Somaya Critchlow: Paintings.” Referencing disparate influences — Renaissance and rococo portraiture, the surrealism of Leonor Fini and David Lynch and the unapologetic carnality of pop stars like Cardi B and Nicki Minaj — Critchlow depicts curvaceous women, often in varying states of undress, inhabiting an ambiguous zone between sexualized object and playfully independent subject.