PAUL REID

“During the reign of Tiberius (AD 14–37), the news of Pan’s death came to one Thamus, a sailor on his way to Italy by way of the Greek island of Paxi. A divine voice hailed him across the salt water, “Thamus, are you there? When you reach Palodes, take care to proclaim that the great god Pan is dead.” Which Thamus did, and the news was greeted from shore with groans and laments.”

Europe is an unusual place; if you are not European, you may see only museums, great cities, and a very contemporary country, but if you know where to look, you might find the remnants of an old untamed world hidden behind this surface. A realm populated with ghosts, genies, demons, gods, and spirits. Because if you go to Iceland, an elderly woman may tell you that there are trolls in a specific area close to her home, and if you go to Ireland, a person may tell you that he shouldn’t walk in a forest because some fairies are very dangerous, or if you go to Italy or Spain, a man may advise you to stay away from a home because it’s infested with evil spirits since the death of a witch: So, despite years and millennia of forced conversion to Christianity, Europe’s pagan heart still exists. And no one can actually pull it off. And no one will be able to achieve it for the remainder of this odd continent’s history. And Paul Reid is here to show us why. But first, it’s important to understand who Paul Reid is. Paul Reid is not like other artists because he is the actual descendent of European people who beheld figures born from another dimension hidden in their souls and the world around them. Carl Jung adored this invisible space, where everything is linked by our instincts and subconscious to wild shapes that take life and become tangible in daily life. Long ago, in a dark cave in Europe, a primitive man painted a creature half man, half bull in a forest in Spain or France, and then a Greek built a temple for this creature; the tale changed, but the creature remained the same. Following tribes of Celts, Germanic people, and ancient Romans kept this narrative alive by creating paintings, monuments, and sculptures in his honour. When the Middle Ages arrived, someone advised calling this creature a devil rather than a god, but nobody cared and somewhere a monk found always joy in depicting this unusual creature in his precious book. Then, centuries and generations of Europeans created much art about the horned beast, sometimes to adorn a crowned head mansion, and sometimes to exalt himself in a museum during a revolution. Picasso spotted this monster and made it the king of his paintings as well. And today, in 2022, Paul Reid is still portraying the same exact vision of a prehistoric man, a Greek man, a Celt and anciet Roman guy, and so on, just as it was thousands of years ago. Paul is not emulating people from the past, he is not attempting to imitate something created by his ancestors, or he is attempting to duplicate Picasso’s success; Paul is simply following a secret golden route that only a select few may tread. Because you can see him talking with his subjects in every painting; he’s here and now in the moment, never walking in the past; he’s authentic, as only truly great individuals can be. His paintings are the result of genuine dialogues with space, time, and the psyche. All of his subjects, as only modern Europeans can be, are a mixing pot of a glorious past and a perplexing present. His Pan is the same Pan from over 4000 years ago, but he’s dressed like a bully youngster from the British countryside, ready to give you the middle finger and yell, “I’m not dead! Mate!” before spraying graffiti on an old wall. His Ulisses is a modern captain with a green uniform but dressing an old armour who finds his soldier eating like a pig, leaving us to wonder if it was Circe’s enchantment that turned this guy into a pig or the disgusting war that still degrade all men into animals like it’s happening in Ukraine today. His Actaeon appears to be wondering himself, “What is happening to this world?” while his Minotaur appears to be sitting on a couch watching television and becoming devastated by tragic news before a silly talk show where everyone laughs. And the goat-headed Pan responds to all of our questions by staring us in the eyes and stating “I don’t know, i don’t understand!”. So, in every painting of Paul, you can see the dynamic tensions of this time, where everything appears to be OK but something inside us is still confused, afraid by modernity, especially of what we call society, in which men evolve into beasts but not in a mithological sense. So this is how Paul is showing us a link between the past and the present, revealing the truths of the most profound aspect of a human mind. Paul Art is high level art, art created for clever people, philosophers, thinkers, psychologists, and anybody who believes it is important to deeply investigate the world rather than stop himself to a surface consisting of worthless distractions designed to take your time, money, and life!

Paul is the kind of painter whose paintings would have made Picasso envious. Pan is Alive!