Anick Langelier is a Canadian artist whose paintings mix the spiritual and literary with inspiration from the Old Masters.
Living in Laval, Quebec, Langelier began painting at sixteen to deal with her symptoms of schizophrenia. She was also stirred to paint after reading about Van Gogh.
Langelier is self-taught although she took painting classes to learn basic techniques such as perspective and the mixing of colors. She studied art history from library books.
“At the beginning my work was inspired by the Great Masters,” says Langelier. “I learned to paint by imitating a lot of their techniques—chiaroscuro as in Rembrandt’s paintings and impasto and swirling strokes in Van Gogh’s paintings.”
“I became an evangelical Christian at age seventeen and have been inspired by my faith ever since. Over time, my paintings became more spiritual and linked to the Bible, as well as to literature, especially writers like Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King.” Langelier nods to Poe’s haunting short stories including “The Black Cat” and “The Raven” and King’s “The Shining” and “The Living Cemetery.”
Among the Great Masters, she particularly admires Van Gogh, Edvard Munch and Chagall for their colors, composition and intensity of expression. She also credits Cubist Picasso, Expressionist Soutine and Surrealist Miro for their innovative techniques. Langelier points to Picasso’s deformation in women’s faces where he adds three eyes or two noses and the expression reinforced by the line in Soutine’s paintings.
“From Van Gogh I learned to use complementary colors like blue next to orange and green next to red,” says Langelier. “These colors placed next to each other give off a similar intensity. I was drawn to the paintings of Chagall and Munch for their construction and the emotion they give their characters.
“Chagall made me discover the poetic beauty of painting. His unique style is very close to the spirituality in which I believe. His brushstrokes and impasto technique translates into twirls and intense flames. I think that his work is governed by nature and by the divine and is also marked by torment.”
Langelier enjoys mixing ideas and incorporating paintings by Great Masters into her own intense narrative paintings such as Van Gogh’s Dismay above and Picasso’s Holy Supper below.
She creates numerous holy scenes—her “trademark” The Last Supper—with well-known characters from literature or art.
“The work comes to my mind first as a vision then I draw what I have in my mind on the canvas then I paint the work thus I give life to the image of my mind,” she says.
As a figurative painter, the portrait is essential in the literary and spiritual work that Langelier represents. Her portraits include Poe, Balzac, Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci and Van Gogh. Her portrait Van Gogh with a Razor demonstrates anguish and distress, and one of the Holy Supper at Picasso gives off festive joy and melancholy.
“After years of work I discovered my own style and my own technique which I would describe as being between naive and art brut,” she says. “There is also a bit of surrealist and expressionist so I nicknamed it literary figuration. Using good quality acrylics on canvas, my technique is a combination of the great masters. I like to combine the history of art and my personal style. My style is always evolving.”
Share this post with your friends.
