Sylvain Lefebvre

Sylvain Lefebvre characterises himself as ‘an imaginary wanderer in search of new lands.’

His paintings draw us into this realm of wonder, at once personal and universal: a world of primordial forests, where tea parties take place beneath the towering trees; of ocean deeps where women sport with vast and silent whales; of Latin barrios where tigers stroll beneath the coloured balconies.  

The heightened, almost fantastical, quality of Lefebvre’s vision is enhanced by the bravura technical inventiveness of his practice. He combines painting and collage to brilliant effect: deploying vintage cigar labels and other printed ephemera as telling visual notes in an imaginary South American street scene. Or laying marbled papers over an entire canvas and allowing a whale, or other sea creature, to emerge as the negative space in the otherwise painted composition.

His influences, and inspirations, are many – from art history, from literature, from popular culture, and especially from place. Lefebvre’s childhood was spent travelling across Europe, with a father in theatre. He studied in Paris, spent formative years in England and Brazil, and now lives on the Atlantic coast of France. He swims in the Ocean every day. 

For Lefebvre each picture is a palimpsest – of media, of memory, of dreams.