<B>Alix LEJUGE</B>

When you meet the young painter Alix Lejuge, you would never guess that her mother tongue was English. Born in Durban, she spent her childhood there. Spontaneous and authentic in her approach, she tries to convey a pulse of life, an inner light that find their way on to the canvas through warm tones.

“A work of art does not necessarily have to be serious-minded to be good.” Those who have the image of Van Gogh-like painters or the romantic, cast-away artists may be surprised. Art, according to Alix Lejuge, just has to captivate one’s sensibility.

In fact she likes “light in painting”, and the noble task of the artist may just be to reveal simple things that remain unnoticed to the common man. Amazement, the temporary title of one of her works, may thus be shared and the light that flows in life conveyed by a palette where warm tones dominate.

“The sky in Mauritius is so beautiful,” says the Durban-born painter, who will present a solo exhibition in October at the Alliance Française (AF), after participating in the pARTage workshop, for a collective exhibition at the AF as from next Friday.

“In Africa, it was more the warm atmosphere that struck me.” Alix’s parents were in fact Mauritians but she grew up in South Africa and only visited Mauritius twice in her childhood at five and at sixteen. In South Africa, her family was quite isolated and she confesses, “I always wanted to live in Mauritius. I felt like a foreigner in Durban.”

Meanwhile she studied graphic design and started work in advertising. But just for a short time. “I actually worked only a year in that sector. Though advertisement involves a playful approach to creativity, the stress on the commercial aspect did not please me.” That activity was just the opposite of her artistic needs. “I don’t control the time when I feel inspired to paint. I just wait for it.”

But how long did she wait to become a painter? What was the situation in South Africa? “My job was a little despised by South-African artists in those times. In fact it clicked when I made illustrations for a comic strip book for the Red Cross. And when I came to Mauritius, I began painting landscapes while discovering the island.”

Alix Lejuge also spent four years in Réunion island, where she learnt to master the French language but where she was still “unhappy working in advertising.” She thought she had to reflect her inner feelings with a more satisfactory medium, with truer colours. So she finally decided that her life would be that of an artist.

It led Alix (who got married but has kept her artist’s name) to exhibitions at Helène de Senneville or Max Boullé galleries. Even then she would not always feel at ease. Exhibitions can be testing in the sense that “I am perceived with other people’s eyes.”

And how does she react to other artists’ works? “Integrity and vision attract me. When I participated in the pARTage workshop, I felt as if I was already familiar with the other participants. But it’s also as if you are stripped bare.” But art, whatever it is, is always a challenge.