Artist Anick Langelier Looks to the Old Masters

 

Last supper, acrylic on canvas, 2023

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.

Exo Van Go, acrylic on canvas, 2015.

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.

Dismay, acrylic on canvas, 2013.

 

 

 

“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.

Holy Communion with Cartoon Characters, acrylic on canvas, 2004.

“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.”

Van Gogh and Gauguin at the Café, acrylic on canvas, acrylic on canvas, 2021.

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.

Picasso’s Holy Supper, acrylic on canvas, 2023.
Portraits of musician Franchino Gaffurio and Gnevra de’Benci, acrylic on canvas, 2017.

She creates numerous holy scenes—her “trademark” The Last Supper—with well-known characters from literature or art.

The Apocalypse, acrylic on canvas, 2017.

“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.

Nightmare with Crows, acrylic on canvas, 2013.
Van Gogh with Razor, acrylic on canvas, 2021

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.”


Anick Langelier
A resident of Montreal, Quebec, Anick Langelier currently has a permanent exhibition at the Robert Poulin gallery in Montreal. She also has paintings at the Musée D’art Naif in Magog, Quebec and at the Musée D’art Singulier Contemporain in Mansonville. Other works will soon go to the Cécile Sabourdy Museum and gardens in Vicq-sur-Breuilh, France. In February 2025, Langelier will exhibit at the Anno Domini gallery in San Jose, Calif.

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