Tiffanie Delune’s work is both deeply personal and universal, archetypal. So I shouldn’t be surprised by the bright and open way she greets me, or the grounded and generous analogies ready to hand. ’A part of my practice feels more like yoga — very relaxing, meditative and calm — and another part is more boxing. I’m physically reacting to my current emotional state, and I naturally have a lot of energy.’
I can see what she means, energy-wise. On the move — not restlessly, but somehow hospitably — she talks me through some of her pieces, and the ideas I keep returning to are innocence and experience. In ‘Lobsters & Desire’, for example, the simple, geometric semi-circles that make up the lobsters’ carapaces contrast with the more worked, sensuous rouge of their background.
ArrayLobsters & Desire, 2018
Is she conscious of innocence and experience as a twinned theme in her work? ‘I smile at the fact that I was ashamed for so long of my childhood,’ Delune says. ‘I was ashamed of where I was born and of so many things. Now, when I look at it, being thirty-one and painting it, I’m proud of it because it’s part of my story and it’s, for me, what’s created a sense of my art. I find that childhood, family and relationships, as subjects, are endless.’
Is she conscious of innocence and experience as a twinned theme in her work?
I ask her if having a child of her own impacted her practice. ‘Well, it entirely shifted. I actually restarted painting when I gave birth.’ Delune was always creative as a child. As a teenager, she wanted to be a fashion designer. But, around sixteen, she ‘discouraged’ herself: ‘I realised where I was born, that we wouldn’t have the funds for me to go to the art school that I wanted to go to, and lacked confidence.’
Let a Lion Cry, 2018
Besides, there weren’t a lot of role models growing up, of women artists, let alone women of colour. ‘I didn’t see being a painter as this thing you could do,’ Delune says. Be that as it may, when she became pregnant, she started to question herself. ‘We always encourage children and say, “Oh, you can do whatever you want, you can be whoever you want to be”, but are you doing what you want? And that’s part of why I started, about two years ago.’
It’s been a prolific two years. Delune’s first solo show — the culmination of a 2018 residency at 16/16 in Lagos — was titled ‘Coloriosity’. It’s the perfect blend word to describe a practice that so freely blends: not only materials, from acrylic to oil pastels, from pearls to hairnets; but influences, too, from African textiles to Matisse-like ‘cut-outs’ to her love of the sharp and bright suits of so-called sapeurs.
ArrayLove’s Circus, 2018
All the while, Delune is suspicious of the term ‘tradition’ — with its suggestion that artistry can be cleanly transmitted down a line in an uncomplicated way — instead running on a pure attraction to colour and shape. But Delune felt this colour curiosity alone was not sufficient subject matter, and her time in Lagos marked a ‘switch’ in her practice, as she navigated personal highs and lows, rolling with the punches.
Delune felt this colour curiosity alone was not sufficient subject matter, and her time in Lagos marked a ‘switch’ in her practice…
When she returned to London, Delune became a single mother. ‘It was the first time in my life that I actually told some of my friends “I am not okay”.’ Allowing herself to be vulnerable, however, led to a breakthrough in terms of her work. ‘I remember telling myself, you need to keep going. You’re going to put yourself in the painting, you’re going to put the emotions and the energy and all of that in the painting, then it will help.’
Here I Am, Naked, 2019
Not an easy thing to do, to let your guard down like that. But Delune describes painting as acting like a ‘gargoyle’ for her — very French, we laugh. ‘It has been protecting me,’ she says. ‘It’s been very helpful. Every time I create a new piece, especially about my childhood, I feel so much lighter.’
Lightness is clearly something Delune values, as soon our discussion takes us to the film Little Miss Sunshine. ‘Sometimes you think about certain memories, and you’re like, fuck, should I laugh about that? It feels funny-pathetic sometimes and I just think it’s liberating when you can absolutely laugh about some of your trauma.’ For example, she talks about a new work on the horizon — exploring feelings about sharing a bed with her brother and sisters when visiting her mother in her tiny Paris apartment. Initially, the memory is of feeling frustrated, but then, she thinks, could it be fun? Maybe if you see siblings top-to-tail, ‘toes in the nose’, jostling for space.
ArrayMetanoia, 2019
Delune’s 1-54 debut last year included ‘The Unwanted Diamond’, a portrait of her father. My immediate and rather child-like reaction is one of recognition, pointing: ‘That’s a halo [around his head].’ ‘Exactly. Because my dad grew up in the missionary in DR Congo.’ The background, as in many of Delune’s paintings, would not look out of place emblazoned on fabric; then again, with its bold white stripes, alternating with purple fading to pink, it could be a flag of an unknown country.
…with its bold white stripes, alternating with purple fading to pink, it could be a flag of an unknown country.
The more Delune talks about her father — who, in the past, variously described himself as ‘African’, ‘nomad’, ‘orphan’ — I’m reminded of what a privilege it is to be able to more or less trace back an ancestral line, rather than, in many cases, imagine or invent one through fantasy and snatches of family folklore. The figure in the portrait has diamonds in his eyes, a reference to DR Congo’s gold and diamond rich soil, Delune explains. ‘I wanted to elevate his story and for him to have a look-at-me-now face.’ Who would those stark, staring, sparkling eyes see?
Patience, Phantasm, 2019
When Delune was a child, her father would often say to his children that they ‘had black clouds above [their] heads and needed to believe in [their] dreams’ — not a discouraging comment, but one from a single father with a hopeful, optimistic standpoint, holding down his family. Last year, Delune’s work ‘The Black Clouds Above Our Heads And Gold Stars In Our Dreams’ was put up for auction in Paris. Delune marvels at the irony of how, out of her entire catalogue, the auction house picked that piece in particular.
With gargoyles poised against the threat of black clouds, and stars clearly aligning, I wonder if Delune is shaping up to be the kind of role model she never had. ‘Our idea of the artist is quite a patriarchal idea,’ I suggest. ‘Very,’ she says. ‘But I think it’s slowly changing and it will change more and more.’
