Michaela Yearwood-Dan is a true millennial. She jokes that you can see it in the pastel pinks and floral motifs in her work. That identity is just as true to her as being Black, queer, and a woman. But during art school, she realised she was being pigeonholed into particular styles of painting because of her race, gender and sexuality. Her tutors and peers “found it too difficult to understand racial commentary beyond figural representation.” Against the expectation of people and symbols in representative work, Yearwood-Dan revels in the abstract. She fills her canvases with thick whooshes of colour – leaving meaning and possibility open.