John Reid

I am basically a studio painter. Although I spend long stretches of time painting outside, it is not with any intention of representing subject matter presented by the landscape. The creation of form and/or subject matter within the framework of the canvas arises for me from the process of painting itself and not from any premeditated intent. I do not consciously attach meaning or narrative to my work, as it is the language of paint as a felt sensation that interests me - not images structured as a representation of that which can be put into words. Meaning carries an enormous intellectual burden, whereas the sensate, without implied meaning, tells a "tale" by taking the viewer outside their realm of logic.

Painting for me is directly comparable to biochemistry, which I studied for a significant period of time. With the latter, one studies the relationships between substances in a test tube and their potential reactivity. With painting, the same sense of relationship and reactivity is looked for - between colours and between individual marks on the canvas. Paintings are also catalysts, a surface that stimulates a reaction to procede, not necessarily seen or articulated but felt within the viewer.

For me, painting is the external expression of the process of striving for and reaching a state of resolve.

This can best be summed up by the late Albert Tucker in an interview shortly before his death. "For me, art stops with that moment of poised tension which remains just before the solution of an enigma, the sense of an impending encounter before the final truth. It does not attempt the blasphemy of reducing it to our human scale in order to possess it and glorify our ego. To do so destroys our sense of awe and the miraculous human reverence; the area where our possible immortality lies." John Reid