Inès Longevial

For me, painting is something highly personal, like a private diary. In my paintings, I tell a story, I conceal subtle clues, I project emotions onto them… and that’s something I can only do with myself as the subject.  I started painting at a very early age, and it was always a means for me to regulate certain things. Sometimes, I take small breaks, as the process can sometimes become a bit draining. It’s as if I’d disappear in a way. In any case, once I manage to transfer all the emotions I have onto a canvas or a series, I free myself from something and it feels really good. That being said, to project my emotions onto someone else’s face would be rather bizarre, and quite unnatural. When I paint someone else I feel like I’m stealing something from them. I sometimes paint my sister or some friend, but then I find it very hard to show these paintings.

Indeed, but you see, in painting, there’s a tactile and sensuous dimension involved, with the application of each brushstroke, it’s about the texture. When painting someone, you engage in a highly meditative relationship with their skin. I project very intimate emotions and feelings onto my paintings, this process demands a special level of involvement, which can be challenging at times. 

At first, I didn’t know that I could make a living from it. I thought that only dead artists had their work exhibited! (laughs) or very conceptual artists, which is far from the kind of work that I do… It wasn’t so long ago that I realized that the contemporary art scene was a milieu where I could exhibit my work too.

Absolutely, it played a major role. My “start” was in 2013, when Instagram was “the new thing” and I was still living in Toulouse, where I did my studies. People would share everything, what they ate, who they were with, what they drank… I happened to come across the profile of someone who shared their art and so I thought, why don’t I share my work too? I gradually began posting what I did every day – I have always done plenty of drawings on a daily basis – but also everything around the final artwork. I’d make posts describing my process and show preliminary drawings, the preparation of the canvases and paints… you could get a picture of everything around the painting itself. When you experience a painting through a picture you miss the physical experience, the face-to-face with the work, so these posts helped contextualize it. Once I moved to Paris, I started getting commissions. At first, it was a bar in Pigalle, for whom I’d do monthly paintings inspired by the season’s colours, which served as invitations. Then I was discovered by my first gallery in Los Angeles, the following year, another gallery in San Francisco exhibited my work, and finally, one in New York. As a result of this visibility in the United States, I got a lot of press coverage, which eventually drew the interest of the French public. Three years ago, I met Charlotte Ketabi, former director of the Nathalie Obadia Gallery, who chose me as the first artist to launch her eponymous gallery.

Yes, definitely. I have learned to distance myself from the work though, as once you finish a painting, it isn’t yours anymore, at all. The minute you share an artwork, it belongs to others. Nevertheless, it has always struck me that everyone describes me as “so sweet and joyful”, while my paintings carry overtones of anger and sadness. Not myself though, I’m rather happy and nice, I’d say! (laughs)

I’ve always wanted to create portraits of warrior-like women, who impose themselves and stand in postures that we aren’t used to seeing. I wanted my figures to convey a powerful, almost dominant gaze. So they would exude a soft sense of strength.

Yes, I often go to see exhibitions by contemporary artists, but painting isn’t necessarily what nourishes my work the most. I rather go to the opera, for instance. Last year I went to see a piece by Pina Bausch that moved me to the point that I burst into tears. It’s contemporary ballet, really inspiring. But also theatre plays, books, and even cooking!

Currently, I’m having some trouble finishing À la recherche du temps perdu. I’m also reading Colette’s Les Vrilles de la Vigne, and your question also makes me think of Henri Michaux’s Poteaux d’Angles. I love reading aphorisms, little quotations, poems…

For my upcoming exhibition at Ketabi Bourdet, I drew inspiration from Italo Calvino’s novel The Rampant Baron. It’s the story of a boy going against his father’s authority who, in a gesture of defiance, climbs into a tree, where he will live his entire life, he will never set foot on the ground ever again. While I was reading it, images of light and shadows projected onto faces and bodies came to me. 

I also liked the idea of a connection with the trees. You know, they say that when you hug a tree… and in fact, I was on the Costa Brava among the pine trees, and I wanted to pay tribute to the trees, hence the name of the exhibition, ‘Perchée’ (Perched, in English).

That’s exactly it, a garden on their skin. When I imagined these perched beings, I wanted to incorporate the interplay of light and shadows and all sorts of animals and flowers constituting their world onto their bodies. There are pine trees, birds, ants, swallows… pretty much everything you would find on the Costa Brava. I like to add these kinds of symbolic elements to my paintings. The burning butterfly and the snake, for instance, are repeated throughout my work and they tell a story of rebirth and resurrection: the moulting of the snakes, the metamorphosis of butterflies… In this series, I have also worked a lot on the bodies’ skin, where shadows are superimposed as if they were scars, bearing witness to the hazards of life.

When I was still in Spain, I noticed these paper napkins at a cafe that I used to go to. Their shape, which can be folded in three, made me think of the “cadavre exquis”. I took up the principle, but on my own: I would start drawing on several of them, fold them, and (as I had forgotten what I had drawn earlier) I would continue based on my inspiration and the moment. I would like to try sculpture, but I haven’t found the right approach. Then there’s the work I did with my grandmother, who has always knitted beautiful patchwork-style blankets and who has an inspiring eye for colour. She knitted together my drawings, post-it notes, and other paintings.

Canvas and paper. The former demands more physical strength, it requires a physical investment, whereas when I work on paper I’m a bit more relaxed. The conditions in which I work on them are also different: with paper, I’m at home, relaxed, perhaps watching TV, and I just let myself be guided by the feeling, it’s a highly intuitive process. It also allows me to take more liberties in terms of colour, while I dare to use black on paper, it’s rather unusual for me to do so on canvas, the choice is much more conscious and premeditated. 

I sign on the back! Personally, I find that signatures draw too much attention, they denaturalise the painting. There are signatures and signatures though, take Modigliani’s for instance, it’s not only beautiful but it seems to be a natural part of the painting.