Laylah Ali was born in Buffalo, New York in 1968, and lives and works in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She received a BA from Williams College and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. The precision with which Ali creates her small figurative gouache paintings on paper is such that it takes her many months to complete a single work, her work resembles comic-book drawings. Laylah Ali’s paintings and drawings often infer the moment before and after acts of violence. In Greenheads, where characters appear hanging from nooses, carrying limbs that have been being hacked off, the viewer can recognize parallels between events in the work and in reality, but can never pinpoint any direct reference. Some of Laylah's art work I feel comes from maybe things she see's in everyday life and also from an historical viewpoint..Her work is I would say abstract and nonobjective. I Really didn't understand some of her work until I really read about her, but now that I know I now understand why she draws the things she does and its because often achieves a high level of emotional tension in her work as a result of juxtaposing brightly colored scenes with dark, often violent subject matter that speaks of political resistance, social relationships, and betrayal. Although Ali’s interest in representations of socio-political issues and current events drives her work, her finished paintings rarely reveal specific references. Her most famous and longest-running series of paintings depicts the brown-skinned and gender-neutral Greenheads, while her most recent works include portraits as well as more abstract biomorphic images.
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