BRISTOL.- British artist Sahara Longe’s first institutional solo exhibition The Other Side of the Mountain presents a new body of work exploring semi-abstract interior worlds, where her paintings capture fleeting moments and memories alongside the multitude of stories that live within.

Following her exploration of old family photographs and inspired by Doris Lessing’s pivotal feminist novel The Golden Notebook (1962), Longe creates compositions where dreams intersect with reality. The exhibition weaves together memories from her early childhood in Clapham with contemporary reflections on family, changing circumstances and the nature of remembrance itself.

Varying in scale from intimate portraits to expansive compositions, her imagined scenes invite viewers to move between different emotional registers. Some paintings capture literal memories – the conspiratorial conversations of schoolgirls in woollen jumpers and plaid skirts – whilst others draw from deeply personal references, such as a solitary figure wearing a red dress against a lush green background, inspired by the memory of a heavy, red velvet dress worn in childhood.

Longe’s evocative use of colour stems from her classical portraiture training at Florence’s Charles H. Cecil Studios, where she was restricted to working with just five colours during her first two years of study. This rigorous foundation informed her rich, jewel-like palette that employs Symbolist techniques of subjective suggestion, hovering between real and unreal worlds.

Lessing’s novel profoundly shapes Longe’s approach, particularly its protagonist Anna, who reveals multiple narratives through four coloured notebooks. Much like Lessing’s fifth golden notebook, where these stories converge, Longe creates compositions where past, present and future selves coexist and engage in dialogue.

The Yellow Dress (2025) embodies Longe’s exploration of sexuality and womanhood. Drawing inspiration from German Expressionism and Fauvism, the work captures a tender moment between a couple, representing different facets of the artist’s divided self and offering a glimpse of what might lie on the other side of the mountain.

Working simultaneously across multiple canvases, Longe transforms autobiographical moments through literary and cinematic devices. Figures are often caught mid-action across smaller vignettes, allowing audiences to project their own narratives upon the work. Elsewhere, she employs frames within frames – with decorative qualities inspired by Christian iconography encountered during travels to Norway – positioning characters outside central compositions like narrators hovering at the edge of a page.

Throughout the exhibition, shadows challenge traditional metaphorical interpretations. Rather than representing negative forms, Longe’s shadows offer possibility, functioning as both shadow and reflection to create what Lessing described as “some tiny passing shade of feeling.”

Sahara Longe is represented by Timothy Taylor.

Sahara Longe (born 1994, London, United Kingdom) is a British figurative painter who lives and works in London. Longe trained for four years at the Florentine atelier Charles H. Cecil Studio, where she studied classical drawing and painting with an emphasis on creating portraits from live models. During this time, Longe learned traditional oil-paintings techniques used by the old masters, which she continues to employ in her work today. She is celebrated for her soft, flat-edged portraits that capture the essences of their sitters with minimal details.

Longe positions her subjects against semi-abstracted backgrounds, often using rich swaths of carmine, chartreuse and dove grey. Their quiet faces are barely delineated but recognisable by the tilt of a heador the bend of arms where hands are stuffed in pockets. As the artist has described, she was struck by a friend’s observation that one “can recognise someone you know just by the back of them, just by the way they stand and by the way they use their hands,” and her paintings in oil on linen tenderly capture these identifying gestures. Longe applied this sensitivity to her sitter as one of ten internationally acclaimed artists commissioned by His Majesty King Charles III to contribute portraits honouring pioneering members of Britain’s Windrush Generation. First unveiled in June 2023, her intimate portrait remained on view at the National Portrait Gallery until April 2024.