Rupert Hartley

Rupert Hartley is a British visual artist living and working in Hove, East Sussex.  Trained originally in printed textile design at the Glasgow School of Art later studied an MA in Architecture at University of East London.

His recent paintings focus on the grid; colour and the repeated gesture, using a layered approach he creates frameworks of colour through numerous re-paintings and revisions.

His current inter-scenic series signals a bold new development in this work bringing together several strands of his practice from his previous works that play with formal geometries and reference his local environments.

A constant interest and reference in his work has been architecture and city space, from the 'psychogeographic' city-based projects of his early work to the spaces he currently lives in and encounters on a daily basis. 

He sees the city and its endless surfaces and built structures as his source material, living in an area that combines residential, industrial, municipal and touristic spaces he feeds off these environments noting aspects of the public and private spaces, its material surfaces, colours and changing light that act as a constant backdrop to his daily life. 

These experiences filter into his studio practice, an open- ended process where he generates collections and series of works through an exploratory process.  

He sees his work as 'constructing' spaces as much as paintings, setting up an active working space in his studio, where he assembles materials and colours that lead to his paintings and installations. 

The emerging works reflect various time spans and edits, re uses and repurposing of materials, working on many pieces at the same time he builds large collections of related works.