Artospective: Paintings by Alexandra Levasseur from Montreal, Canada.

Paintings by Alexandra Levasseur from Montreal, Canada. Contemporary Art

An Interview with Alexandra Levasseur.

Who and from where are you?

My name is Alexandra Levasseur, I’m a painter and animated filmmaker. I live in Montreal, Canada, but I was born in Shawinigan and have lived 10 years in Costa Rica.

How you got into this?

I have been drawing and painting since I have memory; it has been a part of my everyday life since the beginning. I did a BFA at the University of Costa Rica and a postgraduate in Illustration at EINA in Barcelona. I also did a major in Animation at Concordia University in Montreal. I have been working in advertising agencies and doing commercial illustration and design for some time, but was not happy until I decided to dedicate all my time to my projects. I started exhibiting my work more seriously in 2012 and since then I have been busy :)

What is your driving force?

I use art as a therapy. It calms me. I create images to understand better the world we live in. It helps me to see things from another perspective: from the outside. My work being in part autobiographical, the feminine figures in it naturally satisfy my need to express the anxiety and struggle to understand our short life on earth and find a real powerful meaning to it. It is about sadness and compassion but also about nostalgia and the fear of no being able to stop time. It’s about introspection and contemplation.

What kind of work you do and why?

I get inspiration from scientific readings (biology and physics) and I do my own iconic interpretation of facts and theories, but also from films and poetry. My work in general is influenced by the French Symbolists. When I do a painting, I often start with a sketched background. I build collages from photographs and textures that matter to me. I do the same with the figures, I look for positions of body that convey the message I want to express and I construct the composition. I used to do that step on paper with magazine paper cuts, but lately I’ve been using the computer to facilitate the process. Once I’m set on the composition and color palette, I start working on the larger support with acrylic, oil and pencils mostly. I usually do series of paintings because it helps me to tell a story. The idea of making animated films came with the need to tell a story, and events that occur on a timeline. I am very interested by the concept of time and by exploring the relation between static and dynamic images.

I’m currently working on my new film which should be ready in October 2017.

A couple of group shows are scheduled in June 2017 in San Francisco (Mirus Gallery) and Montreal (XL Montreal).