France – a passing vision

LLOYD REES
France – a passing vision, 1987
Oil on linen
120 x 140 cm

AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Artist, Lloyd Rees, title, France, a passing vision, 1987. France, a passing vision is one of the last works created by Lloyd Rees and was painted as a response to his final visit to France in 1987. This luminous work conveys an ethereal view of landscape as memory and spirit, as opposed to a literal representation of place. Looming shapes, suggestions of mountains and buildings shimmer in an obsolescence haze. Difficult to discern, like a dream half remembered, they seem to be composed of light rather than solid matter. The vision is presented with a whiteness of light that is almost blinding, as if the landscape is to be sensed rather than to be seen. In his later life, Rees’s own impaired vision caused him to draw on his memory and his superb drafting skills to paint and to see with an inner eye. Forms are not fixed in this painting and seem to float with the towering mountains leading up and out of the frame and a river flowing through the work, suggesting notions of passing through and a journey. Painted in glowing pastels of yellow, pink and celestial blue, this mystical meditative work invites quiet contemplation.