"The hardest part for me is trying to make sure the work translates well through the reproduction," the British artist Michaela Yearwood-Dan tells Artspace when asked about her new edition, Dream a little dream, 2025. It's a valid reflection as Yearwood-Dan is hand-embellishing 10 of the 50 editions.
The artist, who recently signed to Hauser & Wirth, is best-known for her large, lush, semi-abstract paintings, in which flutters of millennial pinks abut lush snippets of vegetation, oblique texts, song lyrics, as well as blurry, Ab-Ex swatches, fluffy neo-Rococo frills, and, at points, even gold leaf, acrylic nails, and Swarovski crystals.
Hers are richly layered compositions that blend abstraction, gesture, and poetic text, as well as expressive brushwork and sweeping color that draw from her personal experiences and British Caribbean heritage. She often inscribes lines of text within her paintings—pulled from song lyrics, poetry, or her own diaristic writings.
Dream a little dream, 2025 is based on an original drawing newly created for this commission. The edition of 50 comprises 40 archival pigment prints with silkscreen varnishes and glass flocking, as well as 10 unique impressions which Yearwood-Dan has hand-finished with acrylic paint, oil pastel, ink, and glitter. A cursive inscription along the edition’s margins—“You are in every single dream”—infuses the composition with a sense of emotional immediacy and intimacy. Dream a little dream, 2025 measures 27.75 x 19.5 inches (70.5 x 49.5 cm). Non-embellished prints cost $2,250 while those hand-embellished with acrylic paint, oil pastel, ink and glitter are $3,500.
MICHAELA YEARWOOD-DAN - Dream a little dream, 2025 (embellished)
Photography Deniz Guze
Yearwood-Dan’s works are in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, FL; the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; the Jorge M. Perez Collection, Miami, FL; and the Columbus Museum of Art and the Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH.
Back in spring 2023, Christie’s London set a new auction record for her work when her 2021 painting, Love me nots, sold for 12 times its initial estimate, with a hammer price of $880,000.
Proceeds from this new edition will go to the non profit New Contemporaries. Founded in 1949 by artists and for artists, New Contemporaries is committed to fostering an environment where emerging and early-career artists are empowered to shape their own futures. You can learn more about their work on our partner page here. We asked Michaela Yearwood-Dan some questions about the new edition and her wider practice.
Eliza Hatch Photography
How do you feel about editions, are they something relatively new for you and how was the experience of creating one? I have made a couple before and so far I've only ever done editions for the purpose of helping charitable causes, which for me feels like the most comfortable reason at this point of time in my practice. I enjoy doing them and find them relatively easy to make as I get to rely on a team of experts. The hardest part for me is trying to make sure the work translates well through the reproduction.
How has your practice evolved over the years? It’s evolved as I have evolved as a person. It’s more fluid, more free, more confident in the approach, content, and the execution of the work. Like things in life, I don't feel like I have to go into starting a painting knowing the exact outcome I want to reach, but just having faith that it’ll be OK.
Eliza Hatch Photography
What role does language play in your practice, particularly in the titles of your works or the text that appears in them? I use language as a bridge between the work and the audience, to invite the viewer into seeing a little more of my inner workings, sometimes they lead with more political tone, sometimes more romantic and sometimes more jovial. It’s multifaceted in tone and floats between common and cultural vernacular and more traditional formal dialect.
You are drawn to contemporary music among other art forms. Who are the artists, writers, and songwriters who have influenced your exploration of identity and intimacy?Recently I’ve been re-reading some Octavia Butler, and often I have referenced people like Sappho, and Mary Oliver in my work. In terms of music, my taste is pretty varied, and I listen to things across genres and lyrical depth.
MICHAELA YEARWOOD-DAN - Dream a little dream, 2025
Photography Deniz Guzel
Recently I’ve been enjoying Laura Marling’s new album Patterns in Repeat and revisiting her discography and reflecting on points of my life that have felt narrated by her music. Obviously Kendrick Lamar's GNX, and Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal.
But in specific terms of trying to access intimacy, artists I always seem to go back and revisit are Adele, Nina Simone, Amy Winehouse, Lauryn Hill, Jeff Buckley, and D’Angelo.
Eliza Hatch Photography
How do you use layering—both physically in your materials and conceptually in your themes? I try to use these elements to create limitless identity, while allowing the audience to explore the multiplicities of identity through the work, in their own due time.
Are the themes of personal reflection and emotional intimacy in your work planned or intuitive? Why do you think they resonate with you? I approach them intuitively; the work is really diaristic so naturally I’m exploring intimacy and, within that, personal reflections.
Is art therapeutic for you? I mean, at times it’s therapeutic, at others times it is very much a job. I try to make it feel as healing as possible , but when things aren't going to plan sometimes I have to recenter with things outside of my tangible practice to help ground me; for example communing with friends, getting outside, reading a book, listening to music.
I don't know if it always needs to be healing in the present moment. Sometimes the act of making the work and sitting with the work after or looking back years later and remembering where I was when I made it can be the thing that makes it healing.
Eliza Hatch Photography
How do you integrate aspects of femininity into your practice, and what does femininity mean to you in this context? Well I am a woman and although I identify in various other sections of other identifiers, I feel very connected with femininity, be it mine personally, the divine of the political sense of the term, that does not need to necessarily be rooted in gender expression.
Considering the work touches upon not settling upon a certain identifier of self, I like to believe that the feminine presents itself through text, ornamentations and the palette I use as well as through the simple act of me making the work.
Take a closer look at Dream a little dream, 2025 here.
