AIR: Lloyd Rees
Lloyd Rees
Australia 1895–1988
Moreton Bay Fig at Milton, figure under tree c.1912–17
Pencil on paper
11 x 17cm
Palm; Creepers on rocks c.1914–17
Pencil on sketch paper
33.5 x 25.4cm
Tall pine and stubby palm c.1914–17
Pencil on sketch paper
25 x 25.3cm
Tree studies c.1914–17
Pencil on sketch paper
25.1 x 21.6cm
Garden steps with climbing plant c.1915
Pencil on paper
33.8 x 24.6cm
Bamboos near corner of Park and River Roads; Trees in Milton c.1915–16
Pencil on sketch paper
28.6 x 19.5cm
Gift of Alan and Jan Rees through the QAGOMA Foundation 2014. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program
The process of drawing allows us to pay close attention to the natural world. Lloyd Rees is known for his fluid, light-saturated paintings of the Australian landscape as well as his expert drafting skills honed over a lifetime of close observation and practice.
These Brisbane sketches, created at the beginning of Rees’s long career, include studies of trees, gardens and foliage. In Moreton Bay Fig at Milton, figure under tree c.1912–17 the twin trunks of a fig reach upwards, supporting a beautifully articulated canopy. A small figure sheltering below looks into the distance.
A vast, open space of potential is perfectly represented by the otherwise empty white of the artist’s paper. Rees observed:
From quite an early age I was overwhelmed with the fact of endlessness . . . Planetary systems can blow up, but the universe is endless, and our little life is set in the midst of this, and everything in it has a beginning and an end . . . [This] gives to life a sense of mystery that is always with me.
Lloyd Rees’s works on paper installed at GOMA for ‘Air’, November 2022 / © Lloyd Rees/Copyright Agency / Photograph: M Campbell, QAGOMA
Palm; Creepers on rocks c.1914-17
- REES, Lloyd - Creator
Tree studies c.1914-17
- REES, Lloyd - Creator
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