“I love painting the female nude far more than the male… It’s the most satisfying thing you can paint.”
—Sahara LongePosed nude figures are set amidst dreamy landscape of Veronese and phthalo greens in Sahara Longe’s Loneliness, 2022. The lush, enigmatic work references Edgar Degas’ Young Spartans Exercising, 1860, an early masterpiece from the artist depicting Spartan girls engaging in exercise alongside boys, based on a scene described by Plutarch. Two figures curiously press their hands together as if in unknown ritual, while another woman to their right gazes to her left while holding an anticipatory stance. Her posture matches almost exactly that of a girl in Degas’ painting, an implicit nod to the artist’s classical training at Charles H. Cecil Studios, a rigorous Florence atelier that teaches painting from life.
Breaking from her early painting years in 2021, the British-Sierra Leonean artist is now known for her flattened style and bold use of color, reminiscent of post-war artists like Bob Thompson, which has brought her critical acclaim in recent years. Like Thompson, Longe looks to painters of the past but breaks from meticulous realism, interjecting bold, expressive coloration. Loneliness was first exhibited in the artist’s 2022 solo show In the Garden at Deli Gallery in New York, her first in the United States. Longe has gone on to exhibit with Timothy Taylor, receiving wide recognition for her shows New Shapes, 2023, and Sugar, 2024. Her work is held in the permanent collectsions of the Royal Collection Trust, United Kingdom; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto and the Long Museum, Shanghai.
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Longe was one of 10 artists selected by King Charles to paint notable figures from the Windrush Generation, West Indian immigrants to the United Kingdom in the years following 1948, for the Royal Collection Trust. Her portrait of Jessie Stephens was exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery earlier this year.
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She is represented by Timothy Taylor. Her first shows with the gallery, New Shapes in London and Sugar in New York, were held in Summer 2023 and Spring 2024, respectively.
