In November 2019 Jonathan Cooper, Chelsea, will be holding the gallery’s first solo show of paintings by the artist Tracy Rees. Painting in acrylic on board, Rees depicts mischievous dogs and watchful cats in dreamlike scenes that combine the familiar realm of domestic interiors with more mysterious, enchanted landscapes.
Living in Cornwall with her husband Michael Rees, a fellow artist, Rees works from a studio in her garden, where her three cats happily roamed amidst the birds and wildlife. She draws inspiration from the changing seasons of the Cornish landscape, along with collected curios, china, and textiles that often form the backdrop to her charming animal portraits.
I like to create dreamy, nostalgic, and colourful scenes of cats, birds and quizzical dogs, often languorous greyhounds and naughty terriers with simultaneously funny and sad expressions. I enjoy placing them in domestic situations, where guilty dogs sit on forbidden sofas, wait eagerly for the postman and dream of sunny excursions in bicycle baskets, while slinky cats laze blissfully on rugs by the fireside, hunt butterflies that alight on old china teacups, and are tantalised by birds that sing from blossoming trees in enchanted gardens.
- Tracy Rees