Artist’s statement:

VIctoria Rees is based on the Cotswold Edge, near Bristol, where she has had her studio for 35 years. She trained at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford 1976-9, and was awarded the Jack Goldhill award to the Royal Academy Schools 1982-85. Rees’s working practice has centrered around the human figure and the spaces they inhabit. Her large painting ‘Amy’, oil on canvas, 180x170 cms was painted soon after leaving the RA Schools and was hung in the BP exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. It was also shortlisted for the Travel Award and selected for touring exhibition to Aberdeen city art gallery. The Poet UA Fanthorpe dedicated her poem ‘Amy Sits’ to this painting. Amy, a retired road sweeper, came every week for many years to sit for Rees and it was the bright colours she chose to wear for these portraits which helped Rees to see colour as form in its own right. This understanding has been a strong continuum throughout her work to date.


All Rees’s large paintings are informed and nourished by her continuing practice of The quick Portraits, painted in oil on a 28 x 24 cms format, a project which started in 2012 with daily forty five minute sittings in front of an array of models. Dave, a farmer, now retired, has been coming on Tuesday afternoons since 2012. He has kept a dairy of the weather & what he had for tea as he sat and writes short stories which he reads during his sittings. In the short film about this creative relationship which can be seen here: ‘Film, painting Dave’ by Finn Fogelberg, some of these small oil portraits can be seen on the racks in Rees’s studio.

The 45 minute portrait practice began for Rees as a means of becoming more fluent in portrait painting but, in fact, this now large collection of small portraits have turned into complete answers in themselves. An advantages of this practice has been to allow Rees to quickly immerse herself into a community and derive a strong sense of place. Rees was a “Fellow” at the Heliker-LaHotan Foundation, USA (2012- 2013- 2017), she explained: ‘At the time there was a visceral atmosphere in the States, with families deeply divided by politics, and my studio became a safe place to sit and voice their concerns. There is a vulnerability for both the artist and the sitter but, through the sitting process, trust is built up and an exchange of understanding happens.’

It was while artist in residence at Garsington Opera that Rees was first asked to design a textile to celebrate the opera house’s productions. The success of her ‘Red Dress’ stole has led to an annual commission from 2012 and since then working with textiles has become a constant part of Rees’s practice. She went on to design for The International Opera Awards, 2017, Cheltenham Jazz Festival 2018 and exhibited her ‘Cunning little vixen’ textile hanging in the Silk Museum, Lebanon. In 2022 Rees was commissioned to design and produce a limited edition of a silk squares for Garsington Operas 2022 production of Dvorak’ Opera Rusalka. These ‘Artist’s Squares’ ………..

CV in brief:

Exhibitions:

  • Currently selected & exhibiting ‘Night shift’ self portrait painting with the 2023 Self Portrait Prize, Ruth Borchard (for the third time).

  • Selected for the 2023 RWA 170 open, Exhibiting ‘Night Shift’ , quinces, oil on canvas 60 x 60 cms

  • Cadogan Contemporary , solo exhibition, Royal Academy Summer Show, Scottish Gallery, London, Discerning Eye, Critic's Choice, Beaux Art, Bath, Critic's Choice.

  • BP Portrait Award, National Portrait Gallery, London. Aberdeen City Art Gallery, Scotland. Anthony Hepworth Fine Art, Islington Art Fair, London

  • Peter Greenham, Memorial Exhibition, London

  • Cheltenham Jazz Festival, Solo Exhibition

  • The North Wall Gallery, Oxford, solo exhibition

  • Piano Noble - Kings Place, Ruth Borchard Exhibition

  • The Silk Museum, Bous , Lebanon

Awards:

  • The Goghill Landscape award. The Jack Goldhill award to RA Schools for 3 yrs Post grad. The David Murray Landscape award,.The Spectator and Adam company award.

Reviews:

  • Featured in Country life, The Oxford Times, The Daily Telegraph

Residencies:

  • Garsington Opera, The Heliker-LaHotan foundation USA 2012-13-17, Cheltenham jazz festival AIR, 2018

Public Collections:

  • TSB PLC, Farrer Brown Institute of Histopathology, Gloucestershire Royal Hospital.

Television:

  • In Conversation with poet U A Fanthorpe
 (West Foot Forward) .

  • BBC radio , interview for Cheltenham Jazz Festival.

Talks:

  • "The Southbank Sinfonia and Jesus Jones drawings, how my practice as a fine artist has influenced my textiles" @ The North Wall Theatre, Oxford to coincide with solo exhibition & the young Britten in Oxford festival 2018.

  • Brighton University, visiting artist's talks: ‘The Southbank Sinfonia and Jesus Jones drawings, how my practice as a fine artist has influenced my textiles.’