Rex Southwick is a British contemporary painter based in London. His practice is rooted in architecture and narrative, with a particular focus on the blue-collar labor that underpins sites of luxury. Through his work, Southwick highlights the construction, maintenance, and everyday realities that exist beneath some of the world’s most iconic environments, drawing attention to the often-unseen systems and individuals that sustain them.

Working through a research-led approach, Southwick develops carefully curated imagery shaped by sustained time spent on site, often during residencies or extended periods of travel. This process allows him to build a nuanced visual language that moves between representation and atmosphere, capturing both the physical structures and the social dynamics embedded within them.

His recent series, Topia, was developed during a residency at the Palm Springs Art Museum, where he explored mid-century modern architecture alongside the labor required to maintain these celebrated homes. The work not only examined Palm Springs’ architectural history but also engaged with broader questions of environmental change and shifting desert ecologies. Paintings from this series have been acquired by the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, the Palm Springs Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

Over the past two years, Southwick has continued this line of inquiry through a body of work focused on the architecture of the south of France, including a residency at Dragon Hill, a Jacques Couëlle house in Mouans-Sartoux near Cannes. His exhibition, To Desitartion—titled after Dorothea Tanning’s Éperdument, examined the often-overlooked legacy of Couëlle and other mid-century architects of the Côte d’Azur. The project emerged from a wider interest in the region’s enduring artistic significance, approaching it not as a site of escapism, but as one of complexity, depth, and ongoing cultural relevance.

Monaco has also become an important reference point within Southwick’s practice. Spending extended time observing, photographing, and absorbing its distinct atmosphere, he is drawn to its unique concentration of wealth, labor, tradition, and spectacle. Its compact geography allows these relationships to coexist with unusual clarity, offering a dense and layered architectural landscape that spans historic structures, mid-century modernism, and contemporary development.

Across his work, Southwick explores how environments are built, maintained, and continuously reshaped over time. Yachts, architecture, and infrastructure appear as interconnected subjects through which broader questions of visibility, labor, and luxury can be examined. His paintings seek to reflect the complexity, tension, and lived experience of place, continuing an ongoing investigation into the relationship between architecture and the systems that sustain it.