Yeside Linney - Artist
About My Work
Born in Nigeria, then schooled from an early age in England before settling in the Home Counties, it was only later in life that I confronted the fact that I had lost touch of my identity and heritage. My paintings are a product of an intensely independent style, which flows free of convention, and which defies easy categorisation. Hence my approach has always been intuitive; change is at the core of an ongoing dialogue with myself. Through art I continue to explore the cultural, geographical and psychological transitions in order to recapture what had been lost. All this echoes the workings of time, memory and research.
While some of my figurative work directly references my heritage, I often use the landscape where I live to inspire my emotional engagement with nature, but I introduce abstracted and, sometimes, dystopian elements to represent the dislocation that permeates my sense of being. My work explores that threshold state of transition - a space of in-betweenness - existing between and across boundaries. Hence my works contain multi-layered meanings that reflect the duality of the world I inhabit.
About Me
Yeside Linney is a self-taught, Surrey based artist whose practice is a complex and varied one. Principally inspired by her National Trust surroundings, she often uses this to underpin the conversations about her Nigerian heritage and identity.
Yeside has gained much recognition including gaining a double award in the Women in Art Prize 2022. She has exhibited with many established artists in Watts Gallery, Compton, Surrey. Yeside was a selected artist at the TUC Congress Hall as part of the Windrush 75 celebrations. In 2023, alongside several international artists, she was invited by the founder of Hospital Rooms charity to contribute work for auction by Bonhams at Hauser & Wirth, Saville Row. In 2024, she was a selected artist for the ‘Black Joy’ exhibition at the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery. One submission was acquired to remain in their contemporary art collection. In the same year, she was shortlisted for the International ArtGemini Prize and the IngDiscerning Prize. In 2025, she was a selected artist at the London Art Fair and the Women in Art Fair. Yeside exhibits nationwide, but mostly in London.