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FESTIVAL OF WESSEX 2026 • 29 ‘STOFFALOFF’ (2020) Brian Rice is a distinguished painter and printmaker whose work is held in 80 public and corporate collections worldwide, including the Tate Gallery and the V&A Museum. I visited him at his home in West Dorset as he approached his ninetieth birthday. On the walls of his studio are the traces of medieval graffiti, including 14th century images of shoes, a protection against malign spirits. The two worktables we sit at have been with Brian since the sixties and carry their own graffiti-like marks - scratches and paint traces across the years. Success came early to Brian through printmaking. Four years at Yeovil School of Art were followed by a year at Goldsmiths College by which stage he was already exhibiting in London galleries and in the United States. A keen cyclist, in 1960 he headed to France to see if he could make a living as a racing cyclist. When this seemed unlikely, he parked his bike in Gibraltar and set off to meet up with fellow artists Derek Boshier and Peter Jones in Fuengirola, where they were planning a trip to Morocco, hitching down to the Sahara Desert. Whilst sitting drawing by the empty roadside waiting for a lift, he had a moment of revelation: “This is what I want do with my life - make art, become a painter.” He picked up his bike from Gibraltar and cycled back to England. colour system painting and despite his success in the London art scene, he stopped painting and started what became a permanent move to Dorset. Initially he was sheep farming whilst he continued to lecture at Brighton: “Always two days a week. I was a painter who teaches not a teacher who paints.” The discovery of Bronze Age shards of pottery led to a passionate engagement with archaeology and his subsequent interactions with archaeologists at Dorchester Museum fed his interest, leading to a new series of paintings. In 1983 he moved to an ancient farmhouse near Hewood in Dorset and poured his energies into restoring the house. He didn’t have a solo exhibition for twenty years. Rice’s priorities shifted again when he stepped down from his role as Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton in 2001. The solo show that marked his departure toured to Bridport Arts Centre, essentially re-launching his exhibiting career. By now he was working on his Halla paintings, “a plan of a hut, with rafters sticking out and with post holes and fire pits”. The series was initially prompted by an invitation to feature on the cover of a new West Country arts magazine, The Sticks , later renamed Evolver ! In 2014 following a major exhibition of his 1960s work at the Redfern Gallery in London, Rice abandoned archaeology as a subject and returned to a purer form of abstraction, inspired by Constructivism. He still paints every day, which is what matters most to him: “I have never been motivated by fame, I do what I do, I love sitting down and painting.” Fiona Robinson Brian Rice at 90 ‘METROPOL’ (1965) By the early sixties he was back in London cementing his lifelong and influential friendship with Boshier, and as the decade progressed, becoming increasingly successful as an artist. He developed an interest in heraldic motifs and started making multi-canvas, shaped paintings using circles and squares as his subject. His painting Metropol epitomised his work at this period and was shown alongside others in the same series in avant-garde exhibitions at the New Vision Centre in 1964 and 1965. He was commissioned and paid £100 a month by an American dealer to design screen-prints and at the same time he was invited to teach screen- printing at Brighton College of Art. He went on to develop a series of colour system paintings, which were shown at Brighton Polytechnic. However, following the exhibition he became disillusioned with ‘MAKING SPACE’ 11 - 13 September: Newhouse, HEWOOD, Chard, TA20 4NP. 11am - 3pm. 01460 221205 / 07816 673463.