Artist Victoria Rees and her 13 year portrait project

It’s a Tuesday. Dave Newman walks down a well-trodden garden path towards a wooden studio, etched into the Cotswold Escarpment overlooking Coombe valley near Wotton-under- Edge. Greeted by artist Victoria Rees, he sits comfortably in ‘the chair’, framed by a window, a vista into the countryside beauty outside. Dave has sat on this tartan-rug clad chair, with its striped cushion every week for the past 13 years while Victoria completes a quick 50-minute portrait directly in oil paint.

A myriad of small portraits of Dave fill the studio walls next to her palettes encrusted with multicoloured dabs of oil paint -masterpieces in themselves, where tones are decided and mixed. In some paintings Dave wears a shirt and tie, in others chunky jumpers or a rugby top; some paintings depict him in relaxed pose, while in others his hands are clearly animated as if telling Victoria a story. One shows him wearing a Covid mask. This is an extraordinary collection, not only representing a significant timeline, but also a rather special and unique friendship, where lives and conversation have intertwined and connected.

Dave is a long-standing neighbour to Victoria and her husband and fellow painter Peter Lloyd-Jones. A former full-time farmer, who has worked the land since a child, Dave was living at Bradley Barn Farm when Victoria chatted to him one late February morning in 2012.

Victoria, Dave and Peter with the ‘sitter’s’ chair. Photo: Tracy Spiers ‘I remember going for a walk up the sheep track and Dave was building a beautiful Cotswold dry-stone wall, and I asked if he would come and sit for a quick portrait. To my delight he said yes,’ recalls Victoria. Dave promptly pulls out a detailed diary which contains a record of that day: the conversation and the weather.

‘I have written down every visit in my diary. It all started very formally as I said I had met Victoria Lloyd-Jones that day and now it is simply Vic. I didn’t mention anything about having tea at first, but as time goes on, it shows that it has led to Chelsea buns, biscuit and toast with my visits!’

That initial 50-minute sitting on that mentioned chair in Victoria’ studio has led to hundreds of sittings, hundreds of portraits and hundreds of conversations.

‘It has grown into what it has become, which is more than either of us could have imagined. The process at first was started to help me, become more fluid as a portrait painter but one of the unexpected bonuses has been that these small portraits of Dave have become complete answers in themselves.

Dave at one of his Tuesday sittings. Photo: Tracy Spiers ‘While painting Dave, I began to understand the life of a farmer doing his best to look after his land in a way that enhances the flora and fauna, giving many of us here a beautiful place to walk. Dave in turn has come to know about the life of an artist,’ says Victoria.

Painting Dave has not only developed her technique and changed her visual language, but it has also been a record of friendship, mutual respect and a dialogue that is open ended. Unlike a usual ‘sitting’ whereby the ‘subject’ sits still for a long time and doesn’t speak while the artist works, Victoria’s approach is very different. She encourages her subjects to move. Dave chats, drinks tea, and now reads his latest short story while she paints him. Since these 13-year painting sessions began, Dave has retired as a farmer, sold his precious farm and now lives in Wotton, a 20-minute walk away. Inspired by a competition in Readers’ Digest, Dave has, since lockdown, been regularly writing 100-word stories, which he reads to Victoria during the painting session.

‘They are great, serious in places, demanding and funny too. He slips in jokes and checks to see if I have got them,’ says Victoria.

‘Over time I have also lost some of my hair,’ quips Dave. ‘But Vic is very kind and paints it in!’

Examples of Dave’s portraits by VIctoria Rees. Photo: Tracy Spiers Two of Dave’s portraits earned Victoria the Parker Harris Award at the Discerning Eye Exhibition London 2024. And his newfound talent for short stories, which he writes on old farm envelopes, are now included in exhibitions and inform Victoria’s paintings.

But Dave also features in one of Peter’s oil compositions, that of Ruskin Mill in Horsley, where the two friends recently walked.

There is a sense of déjà vu as I sit around the kitchen table with Victoria, Peter and Dave. Ten years ago, I sat at this same table. Instead of Dave, it was their youngest son George Lloyd-Jones, also an artist, then 23, with us. All three had had paintings accepted by the prestigious Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Prize 2015 and it was indeed a family affair. George was converting a lorry into a mobile art studio and home, which he still drives around the world, painting. Victoria and Peter recently caught up with him in Morocco – the inspiration and subject matter of Peter’s latest series of paintings.

Peter Lloyd-Jones in his studio with Moroccan series. Photo: Peter Lloyd-Jones Since then, all three artists have been prolific, won awards and showed extensively. Peter, who has shown his stunning, imaginative, moving and inspiring still-life, landscape and street scene paintings in prestigious UK galleries, is to be included in a book commissioned by Thames and Hudson on self-portraiture 1900-2025 in the Ruth Borchard collection. Whenever he travels, Peter takes a sketchbook and easel to record and reflect observations. His latest series, which captures the stunning, vibrant, bustling sights of Morocco, so much so one can imagine smelling the exotic spices and experiencing the sounds of local life.

‘I like to immerse myself in the environment to understand it thoroughly. Over the years, I have whittled my painting kit down to make the process as light weight and moveable as possible, remembering always to leave capacity for a finished painting or two on the return journey. It’s exciting going out with a blank canvas and coming back with an image on it. When you set off you don’t know what you’re going to come back with,’ explains Peter, who like his wife were former students at Ruskin school of drawing and fine art, Oxford and the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

For more than a decade, Victoria has designed and produced a bespoke collection of scarves for Garsington Opera at Wormsley estate, and again this year she will be exhibiting her limited-edition artist silk square ‘Song to the moon,’ commissioned to celebrate the opera’s production of Rusalka by Dvorak.

‘Vic, the long tailed tit gang has been visiting my bird table again.’ (Oil on board 28×24) by Victoria Rees There is something surreal yet special to chat with the man who fills most of the walls in this space. There is an honesty, a familiarity and an insight into the life of this farmer who has poured so much time and energy into the land around Coombe. Rare butterflies such as Chalkhill Blue and Adonis Blue exist because of the wildflowers Dave has nurtured at his former farm. These portraits are as much a tribute to him as it is a celebration of a fresh artistic fluidity and mutual friendship.

‘Painting Dave these past 13 years has given me the creative muscle to take that format elsewhere,’ adds Victoria. ‘When we went to America which we have done several times on a fellowship, I was able to set up “a chair” in the “Longfellow Studio on great Cranberry Island, Maine” and have everybody from the island come in and sit. I even had people queuing up outside the studio. It was wonderful for me as I became involved with the community in a way that would not have happened had I not developed the quick portrait process collaboration with Dave.’

So, the chair has a lot to say. The one in Victoria’s studio has carried the weight of many a laugh, heart-to-heart and personal story. It has been Dave’s chair for the past 13 years and I have a sense that it will be so for many more to come.

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