George Rouy is lounging on his bed at home, a former church in Faversham, England. He’s surrounded by stained-glass windows, which obscure any views of the old brewery town that sits about 50 miles outside London , adding to an eerie sense of isolation. It’s a feeling that Rouy, who lives alone and paints by himself every day in his studio down the road, knows well.
“It can be quite a lonely experience,” he explains, describing it as a “heaviness.” “I think that’s probably the hardest thing about being an artist sometimes.” Intensifying the solitude is the fact that he appears to be accompanied by a multitude of others: the figures who melt into one another in his turbulently expressive canvases.
They’re just not very good conversationalists. “It feels like this kind of strange madness sometimes.” But Rouy (pronounced ROO-ie) is pushing through, completing the paintings for “ The Bleed ,” the two-part exhibition that will mark his solo debut with Hauser & Wirth.
At 30, he is the youngest artist on the mega gallery’s roster (he also continues to be represented by Hannah Barry Gallery in London). Amid the riot of flesh tones in his latest works—half of which will be shown this month in London and half in Los Angeles in February to coincide with the Frieze art fair—there is often the suggestion of a body being carried by several others. Rouy lists his many references: Christ, collective care, a baby, and a funeral procession, in addition to the .