Sahara Longe was born to an English father and a Sierra Leonese mother in London in 1994. Longe was educated in Florence, Italy. She established herself as a portrait painter blending abstraction and figuration.
Artist Sahara Longe was born in London in 1994. Her father Marc is English, and her mother Didi is from Sierra Leone. Longe's interest in art began with her drawing on her bedroom walls in a 550-year-old farmhouse in rural Sussex, to which her family had relocated from London when she was six, taking on the cultivation of their vast 300-acre property. Longe attended an all-girls school in Berkshire, where a painting by Willem de Kooning made a significant impression on her. She subsequently pursued art history at Bristol University but quickly left the course to work in a pub and to attend life-drawing classes for a year. Longe then began a practical art course at the Charles H. Cecil Studios in Florence, Italy. This small, private atelier, known for its classical techniques and painting and drawing sessions from the live model, offered a curriculum to a select cohort. Longe stayed at the studio for four years and learned traditional oil painting in the manner of the Old Masters, as well as how to paint in the style of John Singer Sargent. Following her graduation in 2014, she spent five months in Sierra Leone.
Longe primarily works with portraiture and large-scale figurative painting in oil on linen. Her style is characterised by semi-abstraction, loose brushstrokes and minimalistic details, where facial features are implied rather than explicitly presented. Some of her works also bear a resemblance to Renaissance and Baroque painting. Longe's subjects are set against backgrounds that incorporate abstraction and her palette was initially marked by the use of muted tones such as carmine, chartreuse, and dove grey. She later expanded her colour range, incorporating brighter hues, reminiscent of Paul Gauguin's emerald green, among others. As her style has evolved, Longe has also looked to Peter Paul Rubens for his fluid and soft approach, and blurred imagery. Alongside classical references, she also draws inspiration from how the German Expressionists used colour.
Her subjects often seem engrossed in their own thoughts, their gazes fixed on the distance rather than meeting that of the viewer. Their expressions and poses are subtly rendered, often identifiable through the simplest gestures, such as the tilt of a head or hands pushed into pockets. This approach stems from a friend's remark that a person can be recognised by their stance or hand gestures. Longe’s work thus tries to encapsulate the essence of her subjects through conveying these understated yet distinctive features. She also integrates Black subjects into traditional classical settings, which have historically been dominated by white figures from biblical, mythological, and aristocratic narratives. This allows the artist to tackle the issue of the broader exclusion of Black individuals in the canon of European art history, as well as specific themes such as the transatlantic slave trade.
Longe has participated in several solo and group exhibitions. In 2021, she participated in Bold Black British selected by the Nigerian-British curator Aindrea Emelife. In 2023, Longe had her London solo debut with Timothy Taylor Gallery. Her exhibition, New Shapes blended abstraction with a documentary style, taking inspiration from everyday urban life, such as crowds at Brixton station, reminiscent of the street scenes of L. S. Lowry. Longe’s paintings capture daily social practices alongside urban disquiet. Her subjects, often lost in their own world, contribute to a sense of alienation. Longe has explored societal roles as performances, echoing themes common in post-war British portraiture and encapsulated in Francis Bacon's cages. In 2023 Longe was among ten artists selected by HM King Charles for a project commissioned by the Royal Collection Trust, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush from the Caribbean, and focusing on prominent West Indian immigrants in the UK. Longe’s sitter was Jessie Stephens, a stenographer from St. Lucia who arrived in 1955 and dedicated her efforts to bettering community relations with police officers. The portraits were exhibited at the Palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh and then at London’s National Portrait Gallery. Just previously, her work featured in the survey show, When We See us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting (group show), Zeitz Mocaa, Cape Town, SOuth Africa ("022-23). In 2024 her second exhibition with Timothy Taylor Gallery opened in New York; entitled Sugar, it explored the female nude portrayed with minimal yet expressive strokes, her figures now suggesting a greater intimacy and introspection, compared to earlier crowd-focused imagery. These paintings clearly demonstrated Longe's classical training, while recalling works of the Symbolists, particularly the Austrian painter, Otto Friedrich, and the Swiss, Ferdinand Hodler.
Longe maintains a studio in an old barn in Sussex and a smaller studio in Brixton, London and is represented by Timothy Taylor Gallery. In the UK public domain, Sahara Longe's work is held by the Royal Collection Trust and York Art Gallery.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Sahara Longe]
Publications related to [Sahara Longe] in the Ben Uri Library