Born in Los Angeles, California in 1968, Chris French's art career was launched at the age of three when he won a portrait contest of his mother.  He was raised by a medical family, and though he majored in Fine Arts at UCLA, he entered medical school and graduated from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1991. The art museums of New York greatly expanded his view of the art world. His art education continued when he moved to Boston in 1995. There, he hired a private teacher who taught painting intensively for ten years. At the end of this period, Dr. French emerged as a highly diversified landscape and portrait painter. His realist approach focuses on the beauty of the ordinary. Major influences include the art of Andrew Wyeth, Lucian Freud, and Ivan Albright, and he often explores the relationship between the abstract and the photoreal. He is currently represented by the Copley Society of Art in Boston (founded 1879), BayMaro Studio in Duxbury, MA, the Gallery at Somes Sound in Somes Sound, ME, and is delighted to have recently joined the Landing Gallery in Rockland, ME. He was nominated for the “Emerging Artist” award by the Copley Society, and was promoted to “Copley Artist”, a title given to those artists who have been accepted into five or more juried exhibitions; and is a second-time “Patron’s Choice” artist at the Copley Society.  He received First Place in the 2008 Connecticut Society of Portrait Artists biannual portrait contest. French was married in 2012 to Audrey, a Maine native. They spend much of the summer in their house in Sullivan, and since then Maine has been a major focus of his landscapes.