Geoff Rees

Untitled Abstract Painting, Acrylic on Canvas, Circa 1980, Unsigned

1980s

Geoff Rees (1930–2018) Artist Biography Geoff Rees was a pivotal figure in West Coast modernism, known for paintings that merge radiant colour, meditative gesture, and a quietly disciplined intelligence. Over a six decade career, he became one of the most influential yet understated voices in Western Canadian abstraction, admired for both his artistic practice and his 35 years of teaching at the Vancouver School of Art, later Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Born in Nelson, BC to immigrant parents from England and Australia, Rees developed an outlook shaped by openness and curiosity. He studied at the Vancouver School of Art, graduating in 1952, where he became deeply engaged with the clarity and restraint of Japanese woodblock prints. Their disciplined approach to line and colour became foundational to his own visual language. Rees was mentored by and later became a colleague of Jack Shadbolt, one of British Columbia’s most influential modern painters and himself mentored by Emily Carr. The two worked together at the Vancouver School of Art, where Shadbolt encouraged Rees to view painting as an inward search, a process through which meaning emerges intuitively and through the physical act of making. Shadbolt later wrote a major essay on Rees in 1990, offering the clearest articulation of his creative essence: “His relation to art manifests this. There is only the process of art, the intimations of mystery in what is evoked by the way forms move together to find their accord, the sea changes they go through to accommodate. His paintings seem to be seeking a configuration. His forms seem to have passed through the spirit and emerge cleansed and illumined by an inner light. His paintings are calm, awaiting resolution, inviting the viewer to share with him a reflection on the nature of just being.” After graduating, Rees undertook an extensive overland journey through Europe and Asia, traveling by motor as far as Rajasthan. Over subsequent decades he spent extended periods in New Guinea, Sri Lanka, North Africa, and India. These experiences broadened his understanding of symbolic and rhythmic visual systems and deepened the contemplative quality of his mature abstraction. Rees exhibited widely in Canada and internationally. For many years he was represented by Buschlen Mowatt Gallery, one of Vancouver’s leading contemporary galleries until its closure in 2011. In 1992 his painting Beneath the Reef received a $50k award at an exhibition presented alongside the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, then one of the largest honours given to a Canadian painter. The work later toured internationally as part of the Eco Conference exhibition series. Following his retirement from Emily Carr University, Rees focused exclusively on painting until his passing in 2018. In 2021, the Geoff Rees Memorial Fund was established at Emily Carr University of Art and Design to support graduate students and honour his legacy. All works offered through ADDITION have been authenticated by the Geoff Rees estate. Each painting is either signed or bears a chomp of his signature.