2007, acrylic on paper
£550
Brian Rice’s singular career of over 60 years covers a period of remarkable dedication and innovation as a successful and highly-productive painter and printmaker.
Living in Somerset until he was twenty (1956), it was the period from 1962-1978 when he lived and worked in London that marked the formative years in this artist’s career, strengthening both the conviction of his abstract work and his reputation. In 1978 Rice rejected London, its art scene and abstract painting and, buying a 50-acre farm in West Dorset, he immersed himself in farming – his only contact with the art world was teaching at Brighton Polytechnic. He did, however, continue to work slowly, developing a visual language that was part of a dialogue with the past, inspired by marks made by prehistoric man and the archaeology of the Dorset landscape. In 1995 he had his first solo exhibition for 16 years, a point which marked Rice’s renewed commitment to life as an artist.
Always an unconventional printmaker, Rice’s recent association (from 2006) with the publishing/printing house Artizan Editions encouraged a series of works where the primacy of experiment is apparent. The essence of Rice’s work remains in the area of colour and simple forms, with his instinctual insight represented in each line, plane and colour in which the viewer is invited into a dialogue with the work.