Patrice Rouge is a remarkable new artist whose story is only now unfolding. Raised by French parents in Grenoble, France, Rouge‘s creative instincts were nurtured while attending art school as a teenager. After completing his studies, he was anxious to travel and seek his fortune abroad. First he traveled to America where he spent six months exploring the expanses of the southwest Arizona, New Mexico, Utah absorbing the colors of the landscape and in particular those of the Grand Canyon.

He committed those images to memory never expecting that they would one day find expression in his paintings. After leaving the U.S., he ventured to Brazil where he would embark on a career as a diamond trader. Rouge was drawn to the rich colors of Brazil, the dense jungle terrain, and the exotic grandeur of the Amazon. He was so enamored of the land that he would spend most of the next four decades living and working in Rio de Janeiro.

Upon returning to France, Rouge found work in the corporate world, first in Paris and then in London. He excelled in his job and quickly rose through the ranks, but he never forgot his passion for art. In his spare time, he continued to paint and exhibit his work, but he never considered pursuing art as a full time career.

It wasn’t until Rouge’s early seventies, after a successful career in business, Rouge became increasingly aware that there was something lacking in his life. In 2015, during the course of a late evening dinner over wine at an idyllic Provençal restaurant, a friend suggested that he needed to change course in life. That was the moment Patrice realized that he needed to take up painting again as a way of reconnecting to his former passion. He began painting full time with renewed intensity, creating vivid and dynamic works that captured the essence of the natural world.

This marked the creative rebirth of Patrice Rouge. Within a year, he had completed several dozen paintings, and he has since poured himself into his art with increasing urgency. His paintings are a torrential downpour of colors, the blue of the Arizona sky, the intense greens and yellows of the Brazilian diamonds, the red of its tourmalines, the gold of imperial topaz.