Interview with Artist Alexandra Levasseur

AHC: Can you tell us a bit about your process, themes & inspirations?

Alexandra: Process: Photographs from my trips and other images I find in books or online usually trigger an idea and are significant material to start with. I make some sketches, collages and color palette studies before I start working on a series of paintings.

​Theme: The passing of time, the memories, the mystery of life and death are very present in my work. I like to exteriorize the anguish of the unknown via the fragility of the woman.  

Inspiration: Scientific readings; mostly physics, astrophysics and biology and other poetry and literature. Painters and filmmakers such as Gauguin, Matisse, Maya Deren, Alain Resnais, Edvard Munch, Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, etc. inspire my work quite a lot.

AHC: What first drew you to art? Was there a specific moment in your life or turning point where it became clear to you that you were being called to create?

​Alexandra: As a child I was influenced by my grandmother who used to paint. Then I always knew that I wanted to have a "creative" career. Later, my experience at commercial creative jobs, made me realize I prefer more individual and personal processes. I really started to explore that when I moved to Montreal. I found it deeply therapeutic to focus on the same project for a long time, that's what motivated me in the first place. A kind of identity exploration.
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AHC: You've written that women still remain the symbol for the expression of universal emotions (love, fear, anguish) and your work embodies this so poetically, the landscape, all the elements of water & earth, seem to flow like fluid liquid through bodies, intermixing, becoming one with the female form/soul/heart/muscle/mind, could you talk some about your ideas and philosophy around the female form and embodiment's of the universal in your work?

Alexandra: Woman in my work represents life. She is the enigmatic beauty of mother nature. With this, I want to make the viewer realize the extraordinary chance we have to experience life despite the inevitable pain and misfortune that life brings. I want to communicate the mystery of the universe and the beauty of human kind.
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AHC: You've said that your work explores relations between the comfort of the body and the quietness of the spirit, and the inter-relatedness of body and environment factor heavily in your visual work, could you talk some about your views of the environment and its impact on our state of mind, and your views of relationships as the basic component of all that matters most in our world? Given how fragile and fraught with peril our world and environment is becoming, are you hopeful that we, as a species, will come to our senses soon and realize what is truly at stake and how much we owe it to each other and the environment to live more responsibly and responsively?  

​Alexandra: I really hope humanity can realize that we are born from Nature and from the Water, elements that existed before us. Nature and the Universe can exist without us, but we can’t exist without Nature. This is one important message of my work.
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AHC: You also work on film projects, could you talk some about this aspect of your work?

Alexandra: Films allow me to deepen certain dimensions of my work such as the concept of time and space, the movement, the cycles, the life and the unquietness. The music, sounds and movement in animation gives me the opportunity to exceed the static pictorial representations.
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AHC: There's a quote on your site by Gaston Bachelard which reads "In the heart of the matter there grows an obscure vegetation; in the night of matter black flowers blossom. They already have their velvet and the formula of their scent.” I love this quote, do you feel that it encapsulates the tone and intention of your work? 

Alexandra: Yes, absolutely. When I read it for the first time  I was mesmerized, it fit exactly with what I intended to say with my images.

AHC: Who are some of your artistic influences? Is there anyone outside of the art world who has had a huge impact on your work, writers, filmmakers, musicians, philosophers etc? 

​Alexandra: Philosopher and physicist Etienne Klein, Stephen Hawking, Jean Epstein, and filmmakers Maya Deren, Alain Resnais. Writer Susan Sontag also.
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AHC: Do you have any upcoming exhibits or new projects you'd like to tell people about?

​Alexandra: I’m currently working on some new paintings for 2 upcoming group exhibitions to be held in next spring in Australia and California. Beside this, I am working on a new short film project.



For more information visit alexandralevasseur.com/


All images © Alexandra Levasseur  alexandralevasseur.com/
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