Richard Rees

Richard has been painting and drawing for over 40 years in a variety of media including watercolour, oil paints, pen and ink, oil pastel and pencil.  He is self-taught as an artist but as an architect has been drawing and illustrating his own work since his University days.  In 1984 he became a professional illustrator and Fellow of the Society of Architectural Illustration (SAI)*.  In April 2015 he became Chairman of the SAI.  In 2018 he was made a member of the Pastel Society.

His architectural illustration work has subsequently been shown at the Royal Academy and internationally.  He built a successful Illustration career in Hong Kong in the 1980’s before returning to the UK in 1990 and continued to paint and draw for pleasure occasionally, whilst specialising in large scale masterplan design.  As a director of BDP, he was responsible for the masterplan for the All England Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon (including Henman Hill) and the City Centre Masterplan for Liverpool One, which was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize in 2012.

Since retiring from architecture in 2012, Richard has started concentrating on developing further as a fine artist.  He has diversified his use of materials and developed his enjoyment of oil paint and oil pastels in his custom-built studio in Stockwell.   His current series of rooftop views of cities around the world has enabled him to bring together his love and understanding of city forms with his skills as an oil pastel artist – a medium which he employed extensively in his teens.  This has proved to be a very popular subject matter and he sold the two thirds of his works at his June 2015 Abbott and Holder solo exhibition.  This also led to commissions in the UK and the Middle East for specific city subjects.

He says of this current work; ‘Different societies and traditions develop unique patterns of settlement and I have been interested in these since I started designing masterplans at the beginning of my career.  I find the medium of oil pastel is a very expressive one for bringing out the vibrancy of a place and the way that buildings stack, merge and form into townscapes.  The sharp, at times semi-abstract, technique helps to demonstrate the way we read a townscape and how attractive and interesting these arrangements are to us’