Karen Louÿs

Alexandra, you are from Pluguffan, a small village near Quimper, and you have never left Brittany since you have lived and worked in Douarnenez for more than twenty-five years. Your journey is quite unique, can you tell us a few words about it?

Alexandra Duprez

Yes indeed. I left school at 16 and left for a year in Sydney, Australia, thanks to an association that organizes exchanges abroad. But the experience was a little disappointing compared to my expectations, and after a while I left my host family to go live with Robin Hundt, a very generous woman I met there. At her house, there were many art brut paintings, and upon discovering them, I had a sort of of revelation, me who had no artistic culture. I said to myself: “This is exactly what I want to do! ". These paintings were very direct, marked by strong gestures, produced on poor supports... Robin gave me paper and pencils, and I started like that, without ever having drawn before.

Karen Louÿs

You then turn to artistic studies?

Alexandra Duprez

Yes, I enrolled in Fine Arts from Quimper, I spent three years there. But in the end, my Relations with teachers had become conflictual. It was the time when you had to justify your work and as my practice was very intuitive, I didn't find it at all. During graduation, I slammed the door and they kicked me out of school. It was quite radical. I was 20 years old and I felt angry at having been let go like that. With my husband, Jean-Pierre Le Bars, also a painter, we decided to settle in Douarnenez where rents were very low. We restored furniture that we resold at flea markets. From that moment on, I started painting, and little by little, I managed to make a living from it. During the summer, we opened our workshop and sold our works to people passing through. I was lucky to be able to devote myself to painting without having to find another job. I have never taught, for example. However, it was quite modest and a perilous way of life, for many years.

Karen Louÿs

Quite quickly, you looked for a gallery to display your work.

Alexandra Duprez

Yes, I found a gallery in Paris, the Galerie Vitoux, where I stayed for around ten years, then I left because their vision longer suited me.Then I worked with another gallery, Galerie Duboys, which no longer exists. Over the past year, I have been in greater demand and I collaborate with galleries abroad, in Montreal, the United States and the Netherlands. But all this is recent.

Karen Louÿs

Can you tell us about your process ?

Alexandra Duprez

I attach a lot of importance to the materiality of the drawing, of the canvas. The series of paintings present in the exhibition, for example, took a long time to put together because I made them with emulsified oil. It is a powdery, matte paint. I have experimented with this technique a lot to achieve the texture and colors that I still use today. Always in an economy of means: I make the canvases and frames myself. I often use mixed fabric which I cover with juice (a mixture
varnish, turpentine, linseed oil and pigments), and simultaneously, I think about the image that appears.

It has to shift at some point towards something dense, to leave room for surprise. I don't know in advance the path of the painting. A bit like in art brut, where the repetitive gesture is extremely present. It’s an art that has inspired me for a long time; I really appreciate the world of Adolf Wölfli, for example.

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