Steeped in traditional techniques, Sahara Longe’s practice wields hallmarks of painting’s canon in service of identities historically excluded from it.
Living and working in London, England, Sahara Longe is a painter working primarily with oils. Having been awarded a scholarship to the prestigious Charles H Cecil Studios in Florence, Longe approaches a canvas with all the training of a Renaissance studio apprentice (and a distinctly different agenda). Gently revisionist canvases reframe Old Masters' go-to tableaus, swapping black bodies into a markedly white visual history. Across nude studies and oil portraits, delicate to-scale still-lifes and breathtaking canvases more than two metres high, Longe takes on established languages of power and makes work which ushers it into new arenas — value and virtue, subject to effortless translation.
Selected shows include Young Artist Partnership, London, 2018; Heart of the Matter, Gillian Jason, Norwich, 2021 and IRL (In Real Life), Timothy Taylor, London, 2021. In October 2021, Longe will attend the Palazzo Monti Residency, and present a solo booth at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair with Ed Cross Fine Art. Longe's work is in several important collections in the UK and the USA including those of Josef Vascovitz and Linda Goodman, Hannah Rothschild and Simon Nixon
“As a woman centuries ago, the closest Sahara could have come to traditional oil painting would have been as a muse at the feet of some old master or other — thank god that times are changing, and she’s now in her rightful place as painter. Her work ushers the canon’s great and good into the 21st century, and she is very comfortable in their presence; there’s no hint of subjugation or undue deference, nothing remotely forensic about her references. Everything flows backwards and forwards across eras, carried on a certain gentleness in her work that warms the soul. It’s infectious.” — Ed Cross, Director.
