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Michael Rees Love and Memory
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Published by the New Craftsman Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall Š New Craftsman Gallery Š Images Michael Rees
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any other information storage or retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the gallery.
front cover: (detail)
On our Way | Oil on board 76 x 76 cm right:
ISBN: 978-0-9926590-9-7
The Sculptor | Oil on canvas 36 x 25 cm
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Michael Rees Love and Memory
24 Fore Street, St Ives Cornwall, TR26 1HE 01736 795652 www.newcraftsmanstives.com
The full exhibition can be viewed on our website All work is for sale from receipt of this catalogue
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Birdman | Oil on canvas 90 x 90 cm
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Michael Rees | Love and Memory
Self-taught artist Michael Rees has lived and worked in Cornwall for the past thirty years. His atmospheric and psychologically provocative images of nameless figures in nondescript landscapes are brooding and bleak, yet at the same time suggestive of a darkly subversive wit. Created using a gritty mix of oil paint and substances such as wax and clay grog, these richly textured bas-relief works on canvas, wood and board have much in common with the primitive and naïve traditions of Art Brut. In their simplicity of form and the childlike nature of their compositions, the power in these paintings - which the artist tellingly describes as ‘headscapes’ - lies in their raw expression of both image and emotion. Accompanying these works are a collection of Rees’s assemblages. Constructed from detritus such as rusty nails, feathers, newspaper cuttings and bits of plastic, these wax figures and creatures in boxes are reminiscent of the rituals of Voodoo and reflect the antirationalism of Surrealism and Dada. Influenced by the work of artists as diverse as Paul Klee, Mark Rothko, Francis Bacon and Giacometti and of writers such as Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney and Sylvia Plath, Rees’s works are complex, stark and extraordinarily affecting. Mercedes Smith 2014
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The Path | Oil on canvas 40 x 40 cm
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Summer Nocturne | Oil on canvas 50 x 60 cm
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Red Tree | Oil on canvas 30 x 30 cm
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The Artist | Oil on canvas 60 x 60 cm
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above:
Soliloquy | Oil on wood 30 x 30 cm right:
Howl | Oil on canvas 92 x 76 cm
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The Observer | Oil on canvas 30 x 40 cm
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P K Dreaming | Oil on wood 20 x 20 cm
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The Red House | Oil on canvas 25 x 30 cm
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Winter Nocturne | Oil on canvas 36 x 46 cm
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above:
Sleep Walking | Oil on wood 20 x 20 cm right:
Visible Light | Oil on canvas 100 x 100 cm
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Garden | Oil on wood 20 x 25 cm
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Moon | Oil on canvas 30 x 30 cm
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above:
The Landowner | Oil on canvas 25 x 36 cm right:
Existentialist | Oil on board 122 x 92 cm
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Head Study | Oil on canvas 20 x 30 cm
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The artist in his studio, Ludgvan, Cornwall
back cover:
Old Major | Construction 16 x 9 x 6 cm
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