SCARLETT ROUGE
From June 18 to August 31
Online Residency
The Veins of the Invisible — New Works by Scarlett Rouge
In her latest body of work, Scarlett Rouge continues her descent — or perhaps her ascent — into the interior landscapes where myth, memory, and matter intertwine. Each canvas feels like a breathing relic, a map drawn not on paper, but on skin, bark, and breath. These are not paintings in the traditional sense; they are transmissions.
Scarlett paints as one invokes, with reverence, intensity, and surrender. Her gestures are at once raw and ceremonial, echoing the slow rhythms of nature: birth, decay, renewal. Textures evoke weathered tree trunks, cracked wombs, shedding skins. Her palette whispers of ashes, moonmilk, and blood, organic tones pulled from earth and dream.
At the heart of this series lies a quiet invocation of the feminine as elemental, not as identity, but as a cyclical, shape-shifting force. The feminine here is not idealized, but lived: bruised, ecstatic, fertile, forgotten, re-emerging. Symbols surface like ancient fossils — vessels, eyes, flames, threads — calling to something older than language.
There is mysticism, yes, but it is not distant. It is close to the body. Scarlett's mysticism is intimate, earthy, and stained with human longing. Her totems do not seek transcendence, but immanence, a return to the sacred within the mess, the silence inside the scream.
These works invite not just the gaze, but the soul. They are mirrors for those navigating thresholds, between grief and growth, exile and belonging, rupture and rebirth.
They are not meant to decorate a space.
They are meant to hold it.
“From Ashes to Dust”
A continuation of her exploration of cycles, rituals, and symbolic dissolution, From Ashes to Dust is a textile tapestry that reimagines the sacred within the domestic. Drawing inspiration from the original Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust rug created in collaboration with cc-tapis, this new work extends Scarlett Rouge’s deep fascination with impermanence and spiritual transformation.
Rich in texture and layered symbolism, the tapestry acts as both a visual mantra and a meditative landscape. Shades of earth, shadow, and ember converge in woven form to speak of what fades, what remains, and what is reborn. Like a relic retrieved from an ancient rite, it whispers of mourning and renewal, of disintegration as necessary passage.
ASHES TO DUST TAPESTRY x SCARLETT ROUGE
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Fabric, leather on cotton canvas.
200 × 150cm
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1/1
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Included (issued by gallery)
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Calculated in checkout
Ship from Milan (Italy)
"The Faun Sister & The Faun Brother": Two portals. Two passages. One cycle.
Scarlett Rouge presents a diptych of spiritual metamorphosis:
"The Seed of Life is Death (Sister Faun)" and
"Death is the Seed from Which I Grow (Brother Faun)"
two deeply symbolic canvases that mirror and complete one another.
These works are more than paintings, they are ritual thresholds, visual meditations on the sacred cycles of death, rebirth, and transformation. Each faun, feminine and masculine, embodies a force of nature in transit, not fixed in identity but becoming, dissolving, re-emerging.
In Sister Faun, we see the dark womb of mystery: the feminine energy of retreat, introspection, and decay as fertile ground. Deep tones, velvety shadows, and the ambiguous gaze of the faun evoke the sacred feminine as a keeper of thresholds, a guide between worlds.
In Brother Faun, death becomes fertile, a seed sprouting in stillness. The composition is charged with tension and emergence, offering the image of growth as an act of surrender. The body is no longer a container, but a conduit.
Together, the two works form a mythic dialogue : yin and yang, seed and bloom, the known and the unknowable. Scarlett Rouge invites us into a symbolic forest where transformation is not a metaphor but a necessity. Where every end carries within it the whisper of a new beginning.
REBIRTH
Scarlett Rouge continues to unfold her symbolic universe, among a monumental painting titled "Mia Cena" reinterprets spiritual archetypes with radical intimacy. The work questions our obsessive need for control, over nature, destiny, even divinity and instead proposes surrender, ritual, and reflection as acts of quiet rebellion.
Alongside this central piece stand two sculptural totems:
• "Thumb Totem" : subtle yet powerful piece, symbolizing the primal force of creation. Its spiral of thumb forms evokes nature’s cycles and reminds us of the deep significance held in even the smallest human gestures.
• "Skull Totem" : striking and evocative work that embodies humanity’s timeless fascination with death and the afterlife. Rich in detail and symbolism, it invites viewers to reflect on the deeper meaning of life and the sacred role of death within the cycle of existence..
Nearby rests “Gorgoneia Urn”, minimal and symbolic, a vessel for what has been shed, lost, or transformed. Together, these works speak a common language of rebirth, reverence, and ritual.
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Paint on Canvas
183 X 318cm
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1/1
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Included (issued by gallery)
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Calculated in checkout
Ship from Milan (Italy)
Both totems are deeply inspired by mysticism, religion, and the mysterious aspects of the world, and invite the viewer to contemplate their place in the grand scheme of things. They are unique and powerful works of art that speak to the human spirit in ways that words cannot express, and serve as a reminder that there is always more to discover and explore beyond the confines of our everyday lives.
Crafted from black oxide terracotta, the vessel exudes an aura of primordial mystery, evoking the depths of the oceanic abyss where ancient secrets lie dormant. The 'antique' bronze finish lends an air of timeless elegance, hinting at the cyclical nature of existence and the eternal dance of creation and destruction.
Scarlett Rouge
For Her, art is a bridge between the mystical and the material.
Raised between France and California by artist parents and shaped by both Catholic and esoteric influences, her work explores the cycles of life through ritual, femininity, and transformation.
Her practice reflects the journey of the human psyche — offering comfort in sorrow, joy in connection, and light within darkness.
Without boundaries or form, art becomes her quiet guide and gift: a reminder that we are never alone.
IN CONVERSATION
Q : Your work is steeped in spiritual, mythological, and ecological symbolism. What’s the first symbol that marked you as a child?
A : I suppose it was the Pentagram, the symbol for the Earth, I love how within its shape there is the Fibonacci sequence, it represents how all things grow in a proportional pattern, and when you align the different portions or inner lines of the star, you can draw a perfect spiral. When I was a kid I would repeatedly watch this Disney film called Donald in MathMagic Land, it spoke about the relationship between Math and Nature and musical harmony, it broke down Pythagoras’ theory and the pentagram… and the hidden magic of life. The other part that fascinated me about the pentagram is how by turning it upside down it become a symbol of evil or Satanic, similar to the Swastika and the Nazis, originally it was a Hindu symbol for good luck and prosperity, but when Hitler turned it backwards it become a symbol for hate and death. Also the word LIVE spelt backwards writes EVIL. This opposition tension just from mirroring has always intrigued me. In a way by revealing that all things are good and bad, ask things are neither and the truth lies beyond a binary system of thought.
Q : How has your cultural and familial heritage shaped your art ?
A : Because my family is in the same industry, even if there is some distinctions… there is no denying that they did shape me.. but how, I suppose from my mother it was more about breaking the mould of normality and yet appreciating and producing refined/artful things- making the ordinary things that populate our life be them people or objects into the extraordinary. For my father it was about using art to heal a broken soul and a means to reinvent a spirituality that goes beyond dogma and reveals the truths often hidden behind it.
Q : Q : What’s your relationship with chaos, death, and rejection?
A : This sounds like you are asking about my mother. Lol. No comment.
Q : Do you have a spiritual practice (meditation, candles, singing, etc.) that nourishes your work
A : My daily without fail practice is to walk in the forest and sing to the trees. Other days I meditate or commune with the five elements.
Q : How do you choose the symbols that appear in your paintings — is it instinctual, ritualistic, or intellectual??
A : Frankly, all of thee above. First comes the subject or theme, from there I research - that’s the intellectual. Intuitively, I grab the words or associates that feel right, and I follow them down various ‘rabbit holes” that lead me to symbols, colours or images. In many ways my initial process is a collage of elements and figures— but the ritualistic side is while all this is happening, there is part of my inner vision that is processing, sort or like you are in a dream or meditative state, that is starting to construct or piece an image together, then suddenly like a flash I see the full image with my inner eye. Of course things can change during the process of physical creation but the direction is clear.
Q :You often link ecology with spirituality — do you believe art can help heal our relationship with nature ?
My big theory there, what I have been obsessed with since art school- maybe childhood but it was in art school that it started to take shape as discourse, is this idea or the correlation between, especially in christian societies, between how the feminine is viewed -Eve being the root of all Evil- and how we treat nature. Because our “faith” tell us that the feminine is bad and because of that it must control it. The patriarch thinks it has the authoritative necessity to control women’s and the earth’s body. But really this is just a way for them to justify and condone the overuse and abuse of our natural resources. Culturally, scientifically, we behave like nature is this “dead” thing we can contain in a box, something that we must control, deep down we know this is false, because we live inside the box we call nature. Continuing to deny this fact, or forgetting that we are the caretakers of this greater organism, is a collective suicide. I don’t know if art can save us, but art is the means from which we can envision ourselves and our futures. Art is our mirror and it is also the means to collectively represent the collective identity we want to become. All civilisation starts with a framework that is conceptualised and shaped by the symbols we project onto and propel our destinies from. So yes in that sense, I think art is a extremely powerful tool. But not if you are only going to us it to decorate your walls. Art has to reflect the image of what you want to be, and collective art structures need to be collectively erected to guide us. Like the incredible stone lace duomo that is the heart of Milano.
Q : What does it mean to you to transmute pain or memory through the act of creation?
A : Like me —my creations have different facets, sometimes I am thinking meta in a galactic purposes sense; while sometimes I am going through a transformation, and creating cathartic work becomes part of my process of achieving or ritualistically acknowledging that a transformation is taking place… or sometimes has already occurred. Meaning the artworks is helping me heal or change— but sometimes the artwork is a memento to my past self.
Q : Some of your pieces feel like visual altars. Do you have any personal rituals while creating?”
A : I love altars and I love making them, it is not something I was taught but it something that always made sense to me. I always have an Ofrenda in my house, I don’t always interact with it, but I need to know it’s there. Again I find it a bit strange because it was not something that was part of my family’s culture but I suppose when I started getting into meditation, when I was ten, and then more into to witchcraft in my teens, having an altar set up in my house has been a constant anchor in my life. And actually the other day Skyler, my partner in Love, suggested I do a series of art altars, mixing medias and found objets, that can by hung on the wall, I really think he may be onto something.
Q : How does the vulnerability of the living world show up in your creative process ?
A : Revealing one’s own vulnerability and telling vulnerable stories is the point of art. If it shows up in my art — the better my art can speak to its audience. Or if it shows up in my works, then I have achieved to make what we deem as Art, or at least the best form it can attain.
Q : What drives you most today: anger, love, urgency, or faith?
A : Anger/pain drives me during menstruation, Love the week after. Urgency when I am ovulating. Faith when I am in the process of incubation.. whether a child or an artwork.
Q : Scarlett, what’s a question you wish someone had asked you — and what would your answer be?
A : I don’t know what the question is but I wrote this down the other day:
The body is recycled and consciousness is absolute. Just because there seems to be a fraction of it inside me or you, that we call a soul or spirit, does not mean that it is not already whole. Even when my body is turned “off” after its final breath, consciousness remains eternally present. That is the point of the practice of meditation, that is arriving to the zero point of the moment, beyond time and space, the eternal now.
Listen up.
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Listen up. *
A poetic blend of haunting melodies, vintage echoes, and soulful rhythms — this is the soundscape that flows through Scarlett’s studio as she paints, writes, and dreams. Each track is a portal into her inner world: mystical, raw, and deeply feminine.