Sylvan Sylvain

In his current body of work Sylvain Lefebvre takes us into the untamed forests of his imagination. It is a surreal world inspired by the long-lost flora of the Carboniferous Era (some 345 million years ago), a terrain of dense arboreal canopies, flowering palms and squat crimson trees, yet peopled, here, with oddly domestic figures - and unmistakably wild beasts – all carrying out their everyday tasks and rituals with blithe assurance.

Born in the French Basque-country and educated at the prestigious Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Sylvain Lefebvre sees himself as an explorer of his own personal universe, an 'imaginary wonderer in search of new lands'. In creating his works, Lefebvre combines paint and collage, using found and rare papers. Sylvain's canvases are a palimpsest on which different times, places, stories and imaginative realms overlap.

Blurring the boundaries between reality and invention, touching on the themes of Nature and Culture, Lefebvre’s canvases have the power - and the charm - of dreams.