About his Art
Rhys-Jones’s landscapes have a dreamlike quality which does not involve surrealism. The subjects are selected with care, be it a rock, a tree or a cloud, and each plays an integral part in the composition. Each is drawn to extract the maximum rhythm and gesture, and the latter is often human. The interplay of different elements all drawn with a certain interpretation, woven into a composition created with movement and often tension, making a picture which contains a powerful atmosphere.
“Starting with the idea behind each watercolour, to a varying extent I develop a theme into which I can play my emotions; The drawing which follows is my endeavour to illustrate it.”
“Sometimes the process is provoked by something in nature eg trees, cliffs or rocks which attract me to draw. In the drawing which follows, I will try to portray in parallel the human gesture seen in the subject. Sometimes my approach begins with a story of humanity which has deeply moved me. The picture is my endeavour to illustrate this by inventing a landscape and including only elements drawn to reflect the specific feeling.”
Rhys-Jones has created a series of black and white lithographs and a collection of colour posters incorporating a border illustrating history and local points of interest.
He lives and works in the hilltop village of Tourrettes-sur-Loup in the Alpes Maritime.
Reflections provoked by my current work
About light. We create the illusion of light in a picture by the use of colour; Different colours which discord with adjacent colours may be said to vibrate.
Sometimes it’s difficult to make the connection and when I do, it’s good for that painting but it seems that I have to relearn it all anew for the next one. I’m looking at a cloudscape, blowing my mind; Several levels of distance with an amazing variation of colour between the electric blue of the distant sky and the shadows of the nearest cloud. I try to analyse what colour I’m looking at, and find that I am completely unable to identify it. It could be part of a shadow, or part of a cloud lit by reflected light; But…… I cannot fix the colour !
I have come to think that the colour is relative to the colours that surround it and that some colours are more sensitive to discord that others.
Today, I have found the connection when I find the colour key to my painting (Parasol pines near Vidauban) The light of the picture is expressed in a certain selection colours between some of which there is a vibrant discord. I guess the illusion of light is created by the interplay of colours chosen to provoke a controlled discord.