Solo: Eight Hearts, One Life

Solo: Eight Hearts, One Life, Chris Rees presents eight works exploring the emotional landscape of a life shaped by love, loss, resilience and change. Centred on the universal symbol of the heart, the series traces a journey from birth to death, reflecting on the experiences that shape us and the feelings that endure.

Drawing on a lifetime of relationships, family, profound love and personal upheaval, Rees uses colour, texture and unconventional materials to explore the complexities of human experience. Each heart represents a different emotional state, yet the works are conceived as chapters of a single story. Rees’s deeply personal reflections open onto broader questions of vulnerability, courage, suffering and survival, inviting us to consider our own experiences of change and renewal.

Artist Biography

Chris Rees is an artist whose practice explores the creative process, with a particular interest in the relationship between intuition, experimentation and discovery. His work evolves through an ongoing dialogue between artist and medium, embracing spontaneity and the unexpected possibilities that emerge along the way. Working with acrylic paint, stencils, masking fluid and inkjet transfers of digitised imagery, he creates richly layered compositions that combine vibrant colour and expressive mark-making with the ordered geometry of grids and squares.

Rees studied Fine Art at Hertfordshire College of Art in St Albans in the late 1970s, where he was taught by Graham Boyd. His longstanding commitment to fine art has developed alongside a 40-year career as a freelance graphic designer, with both disciplines informing his approach to colour, composition and visual structure.

His work has been exhibited at a number of venues and events across North Hertfordshire, including the Broadway Gallery in Letchworth, Baldock Heritage Centre and Hitchin Town Hall. Recent exhibitions and events include Le Galleria de Saint Leger (2025), Letchworth Open (2022, 2023 and 2024), Big Art Fair (2024), HVAF Open Studios (2024), Arts Collective (2022) and the Art-Core Festival at Club 85, Hitchin.