Hélène Longval

BIOGRAPHY: 

Montreal artist, Hélène Longval has been working professionally for more than ten years.
To her university training in plastic arts, she adds her background courses in illustration, watercolour, ink on Japanese paper, calligraphy, live model… witnesses of her great curiosity and her constant research.
To date, she has had several collective and solo exhibitions. Since 2014, Hélène Longval has had the opportunity to present her work in group exhibitions in France, Italy, Indonesia and Morocco. In 2015-2016, thirty of her works were acquired by Desjardins Securities and were exhibited in certain branches in the Montreal region and its offices in Place Ville-Marie. Her works are also part of the collections of the Artothèque de Montréal and Stewart Hall in Pointe-Claire. From 2016 to 2018, on three occasions, she participated in the annual residency of international creation organized by the AAC-Ateliers d'Art Contemporain in Morocco. In March 2022, she presented a solo exhibition at the Maison de la culture Mercier in Montreal.

artistic approach: 

“... A painting only lives in the eye of the beholder.” Picasso

My formal research is based on abstract language, including gesture lines, contrast, depth and mass proportion. I use acrylic and mixed media on canvas, wood or paper. I work intuitively letting the unconscious mind sustain my creativity. The painting takes shape after a long process of construction, deconstruction, erasing, rebuilding in which I apply great intensity. Reflection and the search for composition, ultimately balance, are part of the process. I mix rational and intuitive thinking and lean from one to the other, in a constant search for balance.

Pages from ancient books, sheets with graphic design, paper to be disposed of, fragments of past works, all can be used to start a new piece or to work on an existing one. Whether visible or not, they revisit a slice of history. Those scraps of paper glued together touch my soul because they remind me of time passing and the power to transform people and objects. Drawing has always been part of my work and my everyday life. I draw without asking myself why, what or how. Each line helps me accentuate and organize. It reveals randomness and shapes. It brings together and balances.

Eager to go to the depth on my formal research, I study the notion of space, silence, breathing as an echo of my present preoccupations. I feel the urge to distance myself from the material overabundance of our society. I rely on strength, energy and sensibility to convey my plastic language and my own perception of the world in which we live.