About

“Tanguy Bourhis is a French painter born in Aix-en-Provence and raised near Marseille. He moved to London in 2014, where he continues to live and work.

Drawing was part of Bourhis’ life from an early age, but at fifteen, a visit to an exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris transformed the way he understood painting. Until then, he had associated painting primarily with technical skill. What struck him instead was the power of an individual vision — the ability of an artist’s instinct, touch and way of seeing to define the work. It was a pivotal moment and the point at which he began to paint seriously.

Bourhis works predominantly in figurative painting, exploring presence, movement, intimacy and everyday life. His compositions are characterised by bold colour, simplified space and carefully observed figures, often isolated or tightly framed in ways that heighten their physical and emotional presence. Across portraiture, still life and scenes of movement, he is interested in transforming familiar subjects into images that feel immediate, distinct and visually charged.

His influences range from Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso and Jean-Michel Basquiat to Henry Taylor and Jonas Wood. What connects these artists for Bourhis is not a shared style, but the strength of their individual visual languages and the unmistakable sense of authorship within their work.

At the centre of Bourhis’ practice is a belief in painting as a personal language. Rather than pursuing technical perfection for its own sake, he is interested in developing a way of seeing that is instinctive, recognisable and entirely his own.”