Noel de Lesseps is a 24 year old artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Noel was born in Bridgehampton, NY and his earliest years were spent in the Swiss countryside, along with years spent in New York City.
Can you tell me about your practice? How do you get started on a piece of work?
Until something has begun it is eternity to be faced without being, without
embodiment. As the consciousness that has found me each day may continue, it
goes through and breaks into the work at a certain point where being comes into
penetration by itself. What follows is purely a record of a relationship, a dance that has found and entangled my psyche. I have often described painting as being like a
relationship: you meet, there is a beginning of an image, which follows into growth,
spending time together, creating language, sharing dreams, the relationship is the
process, which grows to an end. And when something is finished? How do you know
when something is dead? It can be quite clear or quite the contrary. The work is about love, in creating language to explore nature's phenomena, the human being and being itself. Spirits manifestation in consciousness is paranormal, my goal is nothing in that of the world other than to be an instrument to the energy, other than that it is to be a reflective surface for birds to twinkle their eye at.
Who or what are your biggest influences?
My cats, the stars, great demonstrations of application in the arts and sciences by
those compelled to fight the fight.
I'm drawn to nothing and it's potential.
Symbols in nature, and my navigation of understanding and embodying the love I
experience through creation.
Mystical and allegorical are words that spring to mind upon viewing your work, with emotive narratives and characters that captivate the viewer, can you talk a little about this?
Myth as something that is living in the world through vast realms of the psyche, interests me very much, consciousness as a fatalist draws me to find connections in the relativity of all being parts of a whole. Allegorically the message I transmit lives and will live in the work, I am grateful to be tasked with translating and bringing forth age old eternal conceptions of what it is to be here now, my work is a way to explore this in tandem with my other activities such as writing poems and theory, drawing, filmmaking and other mediums. When I found painting I felt I had found a message in my life, it became clear and it has taken me to new grounds where I look down at my feet and wiggle my toes.
How important is the choice of material in relation to realizing the concept of your work?
I don't know if there is much choice, being as it is not something I think about.
Materials I work with organically remain and appear to me, finding me in my dreams
and most literally being what I happen to see in front of me. Each material has a
unique dimensionality to be played in, and in each moment presents a unique consciousness of itself. Choice is lost, I don't feel belonging to a sort of personality hinged on identifying myself relative to mediums or a consistency within them, from my perspective conception of this sort is beyond the primitive working I am interested in. Inevitably I find myself sculpting differently depending on the history of work within the instance of a painting. Fluctuating between complete limitation and abundance of material. Like cartography I usually am creating points of reference referring to one another, within an air, a water. I like oil paint because it feels and works like clay, earth, I remember being young working with sand, water, earth, things like that. Those early experiences created in me a love of the vastness and simplicity. Although I am dependent on material, in a way I am fatalist which makes things easy in that I am accepting of whatever I have in the moment as being more than suitable for what I will accomplish. In working with, I fluctuate between being quite limited and having a wealth of materials. Having prepared larger canvas' usually gets my engine rumbling real quick.
What is your most important tool? Is there something you can’t live without in your studio?
Pen and paper.
Can you give us a book recommendation that has been important in your practice? And tell us why it’s important.
The Cherubinic Wanderer, by Angeles Selesius.
I found this book around when I started painting. I learned my neighbor's grandmother had actually done the translation from German to English. It had an impact on me then, and looking into it every once in a while I am faced with some interesting ideas to reflect on. The copy in my possession is a beautiful blue color, and when I found it I would bring it around outside and preach some of its passages to my friends.
Finally, is there anything new coming up that you would like to tell us about?
With painting I am focused to continue work and looking forward to announcing some upcoming exhibitions. I'm currently working on my first feature film which I am very excited about, it will be about love and the age of humanity we are in while abstractly juxtaposing modernity and primitivity in culture and in our loving relationships.
***At last I will leave you with a poem I wrote this year:
Mortal instruments cry of bones
desperate to behold life's blood
what gives you sight
you think the brain
in the red river forget again
where to the tips of its branches
plump wet fruit drips
into the four mouthed cups lips
Image Order
Untitled, Oil on Linen, 4 x 5ft, 2019
Studio Image - Credit to @weirdhours
Untitled, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 36in, 2019
Studio Image - Credit to @weirdhours
Untitled, Oil on Canvas, 4 x 5ft, 2018
Studio Image - Credit to @weirdhours