Biography

Ryan French is an artist from Longsight, Manchester. Born to a working class family, he identifies as queer, and both characteristics seed the ongoing narrative in his practice. Working in traditional oil painting and digital art, he looks to symbolism throughout history like folklore and mythology to explore the absurdity and key events of human life; birth, death, emotion, aspiration, morality, conflict. He likens the creative process to that of alchemy. His use of classical forms and aesthetics is putrified with the quotidian spaces he grew up with in the suburbs of Manchester. Art history is referenced to subvert; utilising oil painting techniques of the masters for urban cityscapes, referencing surrealism through a queer lens and warping classical forms with AI. He received a First in Fine Art from Manchester School of Art in 2018 and in 2023 French had his first solo exhibition, ‘A Material Entity Bound in Space and Destined to Oblivion.’