Rouge Hartley French, b. 1989

A French painter and muralist based in Bordeaux, Rouge Hartley has been developing a deeply narrative and emotional figurative body of work for the past decade. Between studio painting and monumental interventions in public space, she builds a sensitive universe shaped by questions of intimacy, memory and perception. Today recognized well beyond the urban art scene, her work stands out as one of the most singular pictorial voices of her generation.

After graduating from the École des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux in 2014 with a practice combining video, performance and installation, Jessica Hartley, known as Rouge Hartley, gradually developed a practice centered on drawing and painting. Painted images quickly became her primary language.

Her work is rooted in a demanding and sensitive approach to figurative painting. Mainly executed in oil, her paintings bring together suspended figures, fragmentary scenes and intimate narratives nourished by photographs taken over the years, songs, memories and observations from everyday life. Between luminous softness and emotional tension, her paintings compose spaces in which reality always seems to be crossed by something latent or invisible.

Alongside her studio practice, Rouge Hartley has developed an important mural practice over the past several years. Painted by hand with a brush, her interventions in public space extend the research she carries out on canvas: cinematic framing, close attention to light, and a strong presence of silence and restrained emotion. Far from demonstrative muralism, she creates a body of work deeply inhabited by questions of narrative, intimacy and perception.

Her paintings often depict solitary figures or people close to one another, captured in moments of transition, waiting or suspension. Through them, broader contemporary themes emerge — emotional relationships, emotional fatigue, collective memory, eco-anxiety and queer issues — without ever falling into direct illustration.

A complete artist, Rouge Hartley approaches the city both as a space for intervention and as a source of inspiration. Her work is now gaining increasing recognition and forms part of a contemporary scene where painting, photographic imagery and urban visual culture intersect.

Galerie CHENUS LONGHI has represented her work since 2020.