Tracy Rees’s distinctive animal ‘portraits’ of our favourite companion creatures in everyday settings are brimming with personality and wry humour. Imagined snapshots of the domestic dogs, cats and birds with whom we share our lives and homes, Rees employs the empty backgrounds and spare compositions of classic ancestral portraiture, a technique which lends her paintings a comical grandeur.
A harmonious palette of rainbow colours combined with a richly patterned environment of woven rugs, embroidered fabrics, chinoiserie and floral wallpaper adds to the dream-like optimism of these works.
Each of Rees’s characters is an appealing, mischievous or disarming individual with whom we are at once familiar and engaged.
Her quirky, light hearted acrylic on board
paintings are also deeply touching and sincere, and speak warmly of the unique and ancient relationship between man and animal, while the artist’s fluid creature characterizations mirror the truth of our hopeful, emotional selves.
