Lloyd Rees Quotes about Art

Lloyd Rees is a famous Australian painter, printmaker and draftsman. He is best known for his Australian landscape paintings, prints and drawings. Famous Lloyd Rees works include “The Road to Berry”, “Morning on the Harbour, Hunters Hill”, “A Tribute to France”, “The Distant Derwent”, “Three boats – Lane Cove River”, and “The Harbour from McMahons Point”.

Mini biography: Born Lloyd Frederic Rees on the 17th of March, 1895 in Yeronga, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. His mother was Angèle Burguez and his father Owen Rees. He was married to Dulcie Metcalf between 1926 and 1927 when she died in childbirth. He was then married to second wife Marjorie Pollard from 1931 until her death in 1988. He had one child with her: Alan Rees. The artist died on the 2nd of December, 1988 in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia at the age of 93.

List of Lloyd Rees Art Quotes

I might be out the whole morning and realise that I hadn’t looked at the subject once. I’d been looking at the picture all the time, the canvas. But the sense of environment, you know, to be working on a headland and to get the ozone off the ocean, the waves pounding, that was to me what made it so important working out of doors. Lloyd Rees

I don’t paint nature, I paint symbols of nature, I recreate it in a different form and add or subtract whatever I think the composition needs. Lloyd Rees

The best artist is not necessarily the one who can draw an apple you could pick off the plate. Art is something more than just superb craftmanship. A picture can represent something and be dead, it can represent nothing and be alive. Lloyd Rees

Looking back upon the long story of my life, I can see myself as something of a sham, presenting a reasonably successful artistic facade to the world but, behind it, there was a rather unsteady personal structure. Lloyd Rees

I used to stress the edge in my drawing period. It was my practice to use very sharp pencil to get precision edges, and to use it sideways to get tonality. This would bring it back to a razor edge fineness. Lloyd Rees

Some painters comment on their times – but I feel we must underscore the permanence of life. So much effort goes to destroying our environment that I feel the artist should emphasize that we men, and all about us, are merely transitory. Lloyd Rees

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. Lloyd Rees

I’m very fond of Brett Whiteley and his work, a great draughtsman, so original and dynamic and a very generous soul. I only discovered late in life I’d been an influence on him. Lloyd Rees

I feel incompetent to speak of myself as a parent for I hate hypocrisy and it is a passage in my life where failure comes into mind. If I had been a more successful man or if I had sacrificed my work to make money, I might have been able to make enough for Marjorie to have stopped teaching but I was ruthless in my pursuit of drawing at the time. Lloyd Rees

Good drawing is expressive drawing. It reveals what the artist is thinking and feeling concerning his subject, and it is a creation separate and apart from the subject which inspired it. Lloyd Rees

I don’t think you can live life if you don’t suffer. Suffering teaches you compassion and not just for the big things – even for the ants that you accidentally tread on. Joy – transcendental joy – often has a basis in suffering. In life you have your fun and I’ve had lots of it but it’s basically sad because it’s something that’s beyond our understanding. Lloyd Rees

Lloyd Rees Self Portrait

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Related or similar artists and celebrities include: William Dobell, Fred Williams, Arthur Streeton, Brett Whiteley, and other Famous Australian Artists.