Rhys Lee paints to excite. With instinct acting as his muse, he manipulates elements of form and colour to create otherworldly scenarios. Immediately striking is his use of electric colours that animate the picture plane and jostle for pre-eminence. Colour renders the forms that populate his canvases, seductively luminescent. The vaguely grotesque figures and mysterious atmospheric landscapes insinuate a different kind of existence. On the edge of abstraction, figures and forms shift and transmogrify like psychedelic shadows buffeted by subliminal currents – Lee’s rich painterly surfaces seem to float upon a darker content.
Strong composition focuses the viewer’s attention onto the psychological content of the work, insinuated through recurring shapes that suggest a fetishistic obsession with the human condition.
Through his use of expansive scale, Lee extends an invitation to be absorbed by the ephemeral magic of his work and to accompany him to unexpected places.
