Collection

Painter, sculptor, draftsman, digital artist, photographer, and video artist. French was awarded first prize for painting at the Chase Manhattan Bank’s “Young Art” Biennial in 1993, a year before he finished his bachelor’s degree at the Puerto Rico School of Plastic Arts. He pursued his master’s degree at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he received the Malcolm Propes Fellowship for the best portfolio. French returned to Puerto Rico in 1996 and has since taught at the Puerto Rico School of Visual Arts and the University of Puerto Rico. His forceful colors and dramatic compositions are constants in his production. Recently, he has emphasized the physicality of pigment, working in mixed media with heavy impasto work and sometimes applying paint directly from the tubes, as in the series of paintings included in his 2006 exhibition Entropy. His approach to the conception of a work is “idea, thesis, and research,” and he attempts to follow that intellectual process in the creative process that follows. He often manufactures his own pigments, and he is interested in the use of traditional and non-traditional methods and how their dynamics affect the conception of the work itself.