“If I could go anywhere in the world, I would like to go back to the Sudan – to paint the light”

By the time 41-year-old Logang reached Europe in summer 2005, he had already traveled halfway across Africa, from his native Sudan to Mali. He was supporting his wife and five children on a humble artist’s income in Madrid, Spain, where he had been given political asylum. And yet, he was accomplished, having studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Morocco. His colorful oils on canvas – a curious mix between primitive and modern – caught the eye of American art dealer Jesslyn James one day on a sunny sidewalk in Nice, France.

For the past six years, James had been living in France and working in Paris and New York. She felt fulfilled with this self-rewarding business and lifestyle of international travel, interest and knowledge. She hadn’t thought of diverting from the building of museum-quality 19th-century European art collections until she saw the paintings of Logang. Down deep, she felt she had discovered a living artist she could believe in, because, in her words, she “could see the uniqueness of his talent.”

Logang’s works capture the everyday life of people and animals living ordinary, often destitute, lives in the Mali desert and in the urban surroundings of Madrid. He focuses on what is common and mundane. Even his name is a common African tribal name. He began painting as a child in the desert, learning to capture the various stages of light on the sand. “When I was a young boy, nine years old, everything I would see during the day I would also think of at night when I tried to sleep. I couldn’t sleep, so then I would draw.”

Born in Juba, Sudan, Logang’s interest in his grandfather’s woodcuttings eventually led him to oil and watercolor painting and drawing. When he was in the Sudan, he read art history books where he saw pictures by the painters Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Emile Nolde (1867-1956) and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). “Some people say my work is like Gauguin, Edward Hopper (1882-1967), or Emile Nolde,” said Logang. “I don't know, because I've never seen the [actual] paintings. In 1982, 16-year-old Logang left home to study art in Sudan’s capital city, Khartoum. There he began to “chase” the light. “Many times in the Sudan I thought, ‘I would like to put all this light in a box and take it with me,’“ he said. But in Khartoum, he realized he would have to cross West Africa and go to Mali if he wished to perfect his skills.

His work was a refreshing change for James, who has been specializing in 19th-century French works on paper (drawings, etchings, and lithographs) since 1991. Logang became the first living artist to be represented by James, who arranged exhibits of his work in New York City and Chicago in 2006. She describes his work with near-spiritual feelings: “... when I stand back and look at his paintings, side by side, lighted properly, I have a problem putting words to it. I feel like I’m in Africa. I feel like a voyeur in an ancient past and private life I've never been exposed to before. It is rather humbling. I love the way it makes me feel. Such pride in such poverty.”

“I am a painter of light,” Logang had told James. “Light is life. No light, no life.” Although he was attracted to the same light that drew Gauguin and Van Gogh (1853-1890) to France’s southern region, his real love is for Mali. ”I like to paint in Nice because the light is beautiful. There are many colors in Nice. In West Africa, there are only three colors, strong colors, but they are colors no other place has.”
Since 2002, Logang has been painting people, sympathetic with the loneliness they feel while doing their daily chores. “All my paintings speak about life … Whenever I see somebody alone in the market, thinking or reading a newspaper … I think, ‘This guy is like me, alone.’“ In paintings of gardens, he places people. Logang has found urban life causes him to feel differently before the canvas. “In Europe, when I paint the city, I take out the people and only paint the city. Why? I like only the city, and the light. In Europe, I am always alone, looking in, except in gardens. In Africa, I paint the people. There, I’m not looking in. I am in.”

Logang feels Madrid is a good city for art, but is daunted by the commercial aspect that competes with his simple, unadorned style. "There are many artists there, but if you are a good artist, it is very difficult to 'live your art.' If you're not a good artist, it is easy. But if you are a good artist, it is very difficult."

From his hospital bed in Madrid in summer 2006, during the three months he was being treated for pneumonia, Logang continued to paint, fulfilling his self-made promise to never paint from photographs and never miss a day of painting – the very definition of genre painting. The only complexity of his work is merely in its simplicity. After viewing a gallery exhibition of Logang’s work in Madrid, James made a decision to introduce his work to the United States, where his works were priced up to $5,000 apiece. James thinks of Logang as a “colorist” in the style of French Impressionists Cezanne and Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), but believes his work most closely resembles that of German expressionist Emile Nolde.

Mostly the people who have bought his work are knowledgeable collectors of fine art. “His work has soul because he doesn’t work from a photograph,” said James. In one collection, his work hangs with Matisse and Camille Pissarro. “They see the genius in him.”

The intimacy Logang feels with his subjects, especially family members, reflects in his paintings. "Most people don't understand this kind of work,” he claims. James felt profoundly connected to his life through his work: His paintings are not like any I've seen anywhere. They're raw and moving. Sometimes I sit in the natural light of evening, looking at his work, transfixed as I imagine the life he has lived, the things he has seen, the sorrow he's endured. His skin is the blackest I've ever seen; his spirit. the purest I've ever felt.”

With the Sudanese region of war-torn Darfur often in the news for its challenging issues of drought, famine, and infighting, Logang aspires to being part of the remedy one day. “In the Sudan now, artists can only have a political idea. There is no freedom. They haven’t seen the world. Life in the Sudan is not easy.”

In spite of his country’s ongoing struggles, Logang continues to harbor a dream of returning to his homeland, to paint the light he finds so intoxicating, and perhaps even to open an art school for the children of Sudan.

“I’d like to show them what I’ve learned about painting outside my country,” he said, “to teach (them) about life. It is the best thing I can do for my country. It’s the best thing I can do for my own life.”

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