Elizabeth Rees presents landscapes full of paradox and contradiction in a manner that plays with the viewers’ mind and constructs of time. The artist lays out two views equally successfully both as landscapes and mindscapes.

Light, texture and movement permeate the works, and carefully primed canvases enhance the luminous qualities of the paint and add to the sense of richness, depth and mystery.

Quiet country roads appear motionless but at the same time the viewer is propelled down the road into some distant undefined future beyond the scene, beyond the now (Quiet Road I; Quiet Road III). These works recall feelings and emotions from deep within the past, of other country roads and other journeys. They are about the here and now, the future and the past all at once.

Rees’ landscapes stand in silent witness, almost bracing for the next onslaught that will surge down this avenue, course or passage (Quiet Road II). On closer inspection, there are deviations and points of variation from the obvious route ahead – roads leading off to one side, distractions, perplexities or diversions.

Others works have enigmatic figures (known and unknown, both former selves and others) presented in a limited palette with the merest of paint (Duo Chrome I) – yet superb skill conveys specific body language of tension and anxiety. In a symbolic way the artist uses a dry brush technique to drag the paint sideways over the form as the landscape influences the individual.

The view is from one of the assembled – linking the viewer intimately to the others and the landscape they inhabit while adding a sense of familiarity.

Although there is no overt communication between the figures, their posture and placement implies a significant history and a common future – again convincingly articulating past, present and future in this silent dialogue (Gris Chaud). A quiet tension is exerted between their isolation and connectedness (both figurative and literal). These figures haunt the shadowy areas of the image and the viewers’ mind – sometimes uncertain, often unfulfilled, yet inevitably forward-looking on a journey into the future.

For all their edgy shadowiness these are beautiful works that are themselves recalled and in doing so they stimulate the mind in a multitude of ways.