"Yaffa Levan" Painting

I attended Chelsea School of Art, alongside Mariko Mori and Chris Ofili. There I began my fascination with the raw, violent, muddy nature of what I saw and sought means of showing its beauty. I wanted to make beautiful things, and as YBA established itself, I would have to wait. So, I worked for Gilbert & George for some years. Their eloquent but uncompromising vision politely registered as absolute, twisted sense to me. As I continued working for Jay Jopling & Charles Saatchi, I moved to rural Essex and began painting again, settling on a pastoral theme, toying with a romantic, folk aesthetic and made a series of paintings “English Electric”. These paintings sought to gently deconstruct the English landscape and our relationship with it. I sought to uncover the sublime, brooding earth and playfully reconstruct it on canvas. These works sold immediately and widely and are held privately in the United Kingdom, United States and New Zealand. 10 years were subsequently foolishly spent in business in London and Cambridge, two spent travelling in Italy, finally returning to the studio in 2013 completing “How to Be a Girl”, a series that introduced the recurring themes that I pursue now. I quickly became a finalist in the Young Masters’ Art prize and sold work throughout Europe and the United States. Each of my works in this and other series, seek to embrace the luminous quality of living. That in living, there is vulnerability and in that, a quiet ferocity. There is a continuity in these works that approaches flesh, skin, sex. A defiant impermanence. Unerringly analogue, they are glimpsed digitally, works born from home images stranded in flash photography, serendipitously found or taken from a train window. They reveal a politics of impossibility, they are radically tender. Once complete, they are welcomed back to the world. Only four works remain, those that you see here. The others were swept up in the heady fizz of the London/New York Art Market some years ago, these now are offered as I move to writing, back to University.