The Joash Woodrow Collection PAUL REID THE ART OF MYTHMAKING

Transcription

1 The Joash Woodrow Collection PAUL REID THE ART OF MYTHMAKING 1

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3 PAUL REID THE ART OF MYTHMAKING 108 FINE ART, HARROGATE 3

4 Published by 108 Fine Art Limited, Fine Art Limited 16 Cold Bath Road, Harrogate HG2 0NA Design and production by 108 Fine Art Limited Photography by Paul Reid and 108 Fine Art Limited All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in any form by print, photocopy or by any other means, without the permission of the copyright holders and of the publishers Printed by Harrogate Printing Limited Front cover image: Stranded On The Island Of Circe Oil on canvas, x 105cm 4

5 CONTENTS FOREWORD Andrew Stewart THE PAINTING OF PAUL REID AND THE ART OF MYTHMAKING Bill Hare MEDUSA I 11 MEDUSA II 13 STRANDED ON THE ISLAND OF CIRCE 15 THE PALACE OF CIRCE 17 ODYSSEUS ON THE ISLAND OF CIRCE 19 CERNUNNOS STUDY 21 CERNUNNOS 23 PAN 25 APOLLO AND PYTHON STUDY 27 APOLLO AND PYTHON 29 CHIRON THE CENTAUR 30 CYCLOPS 33 HERCULES AND THE CUP OF HELIOS 35 BACKGROUND DETAILS 37 5

6 FOREWORD 1998 was a good year. The fine art degree shows visited that summer were particularly inspiring and I was delighted that seven young artists accepted an invitation to form the core the inaugural exhibition at 108 Fine Art. One of the highlights of that exhibition was the collection of Paul Reid s paintings and drawings, including his epic Actaeon which I had first seen a few months earlier at Duncan Of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee. The Harrogate exhibition was by any measure a success, attracting an enthusiastic audience and national television and press coverage. Following on from that first exhibition we continued to work with Paul, organising a touring exhibition of his paintings to museums and art galleries in England and Scotland, 2008, and subsequently showing his paintings at 108 as and when they became available. With each new body of work, his art has continued to attract growing interest from collectors, scholars, art galleries and artists and his paintings are now held in many prestigious public and private collections. Paul Reid s paintings are undoubtedly extraordinary, and full of complex and compelling qualities. The manner in which he makes each painting demands a great deal of time to be spent on each new work, with usually no more than one or two large pictures produced each year. The majority of the paintings created for this current show are smaller works, allowing the artist to explore an extended range of subjects and ideas before embarking on larger versions of the paintings later this year. It has been five years since the last solo exhibition of Paul Reid s work in England and I am very pleased that he will now be exhibiting his pictures this summer at 108 Fine Art. I hope that you will enjoy the paintings in this catalogue and I look forward to welcoming you to view the original pictures at our gallery in Harrogate. Andrew Stewart 108 Fine Art 6

7 Paul Reid Self Portrait Oil on canvas,

8 THE PAINTING OF PAUL REID AND THE ART OF MYTHMAKING I love monsters, we all do The 12th Time Lord (Peter Capaldi, The new Doctor Who) Although mythology is the source and the subject of Paul Reid s art he never sets out merely to illustrate old myths, but rather, through the complex methods of his art-making practices, he ends up creating new ones. As with the great mythological painters of the past, from the superb Athenian masters of black-figure painting to the sublime history painters of the 16th and 17th centuries such as Titian, Velasquez, Rubens and Poussin, Reid scours and plunders a wide range of mythic sources out of which he fashions a distinctive pictorial world through the inventive power of his interpretive imagination. Furthermore his creative approach to his carefully selected inspirational subject matter is in full accord with the intrinsic nature of myth which has always been an ever recurring ritual of re-working and re-cycling tales of universal fascination and profound significance in order to tell anew these wondrous stories and re-present their arresting images for the ears and eyes of the present age. Paul Reid is an extremely perceptive and dedicated artist who realised from a very early stage in his developing career that mythic subject matter not only fired his visual imagination, but also was ideal material for his own particular gifts and technical skills as a painter. In striking contrast to most of his contemporaries in the current art world, Reid has resolutely committed himself to a traditional academic approach to his preferred medium and artistic practice. Right from his early student days in the mid-1990s he has been evolving an elaborate method of studio based techniques, involving closely observed drawings of highly detailed preparatory figure and still-life studies, carefully squared-up primed canvases, specially prepared oil pigments, supplemented with a range of tinted glazes and varnishes. As such his pictures are beautifully made objects in their own right, and it is little wonder that Reid s larger works can take months to reach completion and satisfy the artist s demanding standards of technical and artistic excellence. All this highly involved studio preparation by the artist should however, not only be regarded as a requirement for the complex picture-making process, but may have another, maybe deeper psychological purpose, which is profoundly connected to the mythic content and purpose of Reid s paintings. For one of the essential features and necessary working components of all true myth-making is the vital role of ritual. In the pre-historic and ancient times this ritualistic practice would of course have been an integral part of pantheistic religious worship. The central figure in these rituals would be the shaman/priest, who was also the designated vital source and productive medium for what we now call artistic creativity. Furthermore in later times art and the esoteric practices of alchemy were closely inter-linked. Thus through ritual the potent power of worship, magic and art were inextricably linked. 8

9 Although we now live in a highly secular and materialistic era where science - not magic - rules our relationship with the natural world, the semi-divine power of imaginative invention and metamorphic transformation is still widely associated with the aura of art and the artist. This is certainly borne out with the highly convincing and disturbingly uncanny pictorial dramas and supernatural struggles taking place in the paintings of Paul Reid. This fascinating, yet unsettling effect, in his work is achieved through a dialectic pictorial tension between content and form within Reid s images. Thus even though he is ostensibly dealing with subjects and stories drawn from the distant mythic past, these sources are visually rendered through such immediate and intense optical reality that they cause us to question and doubt our usual perspectival and diachronic distinctions between far and near, past and present, there and here. How Reid brings about this amazing take on pictorial realism in his work, where the mythic and the mundane collide and coalesce, brings us to another important aspect of mythmaking. Contrary to what many think, myths are not divinely gifted but are man-made, and re-made throughout all historical eras and human societies. This process of myth manufacture was termed bricolage, after a French slang word- by the great anthropologist, Levi-Strauss, which is a kind of tinkering, do-it-yourself approach, involving scavenging from any appropriate source available, or inventing a new one if necessary. This notion of bricolage can I think, be readily applied to how Reid operates as well. In the constant search for new and fresh material for his painting he will seek out and ransack a range of mythic sources, from Hesiod to Ovid, in his quest for some inspiring tale or intriguing incident, involving the gods, monsters and their human victims, which will excite his creative response. Once the search has been fruitful the long and complex process of turning that initial inspirational spark of intention into a convincing full scale pictorial image begins. Right from the start it is important that the artist remains as free and open as possible in his approach and attitude in order to avoid being dominated by preconceived notions as to how the work will turn out-that would then be merely to illustrate. On the contrary, like Rembrandt for instance, Reid will improvise and experiment by drawing on what he finds readily at hand. For example he might use himself, his family or friends as handy models for his compositions and dress them up in concocted costumes which may be less than historically accurate but will satisfy the artist s evolving vision of the mythic scene - with all its dramatic potential - he is endeavouring to realise. The same also applies to supplementary pictorial details, such as the backdrops, props and drapes which may come from a study of a piece of Scottish landscape, a scene in an old Ray Harryhausen movie epic, or copied from one of his kid s toys or computer games. Reid s paintings, like the myths themselves, are of a decidedly eclectic nature. As with all authentic mythmaking the creative process will bricolage disparate bits and pieces together; yet, as we can see for the stylistic consistency in Paul Reid s work, it is the artist s own distinctive vision and superb technical skills, which holds everything together within an alternative pictorial world of his own making. The artist then invites us to enter his carefully contrived mythic world which we, after a period of close examination and personal reflection, gradually realise that it is not unlike the darker realm of the human imagination which we all carry with us deep inside our own monstrous memories. Bill Hare Honorary Teaching Fellow in Scottish Art History, The University of Edinburgh 9

10 MEDUSA Medusa was the daughter of Phorkys and Keto, the children of Gaea (Earth) and Oceanus (Ocean). She was one of the three sisters known as the Gorgons. The other two sisters were Sthenno and Euryale. Medusa was the only mortal out of the three. She was originally a very beautiful woman, who, as a priestess of Athena, was devoted to a life of celibacy; but, being wooed by Poseidon, she fell in love, and eventually married him. For this offence she was punished by Athena, and each lock of her hair was changed into a venomous snake. Seeing herself transformed into a monster, Medusa fled from her home, never to return. Becoming increasingly bitter and determined to take her revenge on humanity she fled to Africa, where, as she passed restlessly from place to place, infant snakes dropped from her hair, plaguing the continent with venomous reptiles. With the curse of Athena upon her, she turned into stone anyone who looked at her. She was eventually beheaded by Perseus who thereafter used her head as a weapon until he gave it to the goddess Athena to place on her shield. Medusa I Oil on canvas, x 38cm 10

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12 12 Medusa II Oil on canvas, x 37.5cm

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14 THE LEGEND OF CIRCE In Greek mythology Circe was an enchantress whose father was Helios the Sun God, and her mother the Oceanid Perseis. Her brother King Ateas, and her sister Pasiphae were also legendary figures. In the Odyssey, Circe casts bewitching spells which have the power to change men into animals, and like many goddesses, the beautiful Circe has charms that few men can resist. The following extract from the Odyssey includes a scene in which the crew of Odysseus first encounter the Goddess on her island: In the entrance way they stayed to listen there: inside her quiet house they heard the Goddess Circe Low she sang in her beguiling voice, while on her loom she wove ambrosial fabric sheer and bright by that craft known to the goddess of heaven The beautiful Circe entranced Odysseus crew, transforming them into animals, except Odysseus who protected by a magic herb, attempts to rescue his companions. Odysseus is also greatly attracted by her charms and remaining unharmed by her spells he lives on the island with Circe for one year before leaving with his men. Stranded On The Island Of Circe Oil on canvas, x 105cm 14

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16 16 The Palace Of Circe Oil on canvas, x 61cm

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18 18 Odysseus on The Island of Circe Oil on canvas, x 130.5cm

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20 CERNUNNOS Although the earliest known tales of Cernunnos are varied he is often associated with Greek and Roman divine figures such as Mercury, Actaeon, and Jupiter. Usually Cernunnos is depicted as a Celtic god of fertility, life, animals, wealth, and the underworld. He was worshipped all over Gaul, and his cult spread into Britain as well. Paleolithic cave paintings found in France that depict a stag standing upright or a man dressed in stag costume seem to indicate that Cernunnos origins date to those times. Romans sometimes portrayed him with three cranes flying above his head. He was also known to the Druids as Hu Gadarn, God of the underworld and astral planes, and consort of the great goddess. Cernunnos is often depicted holding a bag of money, or accompanied by a ram-headed serpent and a stag. Most notably is the famous Gundestrup cauldron discovered in Denmark. Cernunnos Charcoal, pen & acrylic on board, x 55cm 20

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22 22 Cernunnos Oil on canvas, x 45cm

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24 PAN Usually said to be the son of Hermes and Dryope, a tree-nymph, Pan was born in Arcadia, a wild and beautiful part of Greece. He was a god of nature, watching over shepherds and flocks, mountains and forests, wandering the hills playing his Pan Pipes, his unseen presence arousing feelings of panic in men passing through remote, lonely places. His Pan Pipes were made from a curved row of small flutes also called the Syrinx - after the maiden Syrinx who turned herself into reeds to hide from Pan. Pan was a lover of nymphs, who commonly transformed themselves into trees, water and wind to escape his advances. Usually depicted as a man with the horns, legs and tail of a goat, he often appears alongside the other rustic gods such as Aristaios, the shepherd-god of northern Greece, as well as with the pipe-playing satyr Marsyas; and Aigipan, the goat-fish god of the constellation Capricorn. Pan Pen, charcoal and acrylic on board, x 42cm 24

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26 APOLLO AND PYTHON Apollo was the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis. He was also a god of light, known as Phoebus and sometimes identified with Helios the Sun God. Apollo s first achievement was to rid Pytho (Delphi) of the serpent Python who looked over the sanctuary of Pytho from its lair on Mount Parnassus. There it stood guard while the Sibyl gave out her prophecies as she inhaled the trance inducing vapours from an open chasm. Apollo killed the Python with a volley of arrows to its head, the serpents dying screams being heard for hundreds of miles. On the death of Python Apollo took charge of the oracle and returned the neighbouring countryside to it s former wealth; Python having destroyed crops, sacked villages and polluted streams and springs. The death of Python filled Apollo with great happiness and he played a song of victory on his lyre, and from then on became known as the God of Music. In art Apollo is usually depicted as a handsome young man, clean shaven and carrying either a lyre, or his bow and arrows. There are many sculptures of Apollo, amongst them the central figure from the west pediment of the Temple of Zeus, at Olympia. Apollo and Python Charcoal and chalk on paper, x 42cm 26

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28 28 Apollo and Python Oil on canvas, x 45cm

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31 CHIRON THE CENTAUR Chiron was the eldest and wisest of the Centaurs, a tribe of half-horse men. Unlike the rest of this tribe he was an immortal god, a son of the Titan Kronos and half-brother of Zeus. Chiron s mother was the nymph Philyra who was fornicating with Kronos when his wife suddenly appeared on the scene. To escape notice he transformed himself into a horse, and in this way sired a half-equine son. The Centaur was a great teacher who mentored many of the great heroes of myth including Jason, Peleus, Asklepios, Aristaios and Akhilleus. Eventually, however, he passed away from the earth, after accidentally being wounded by Herakles with an arrow coated in Hydra-venom. The wound was incurable, and unbearably painful, so Chiron voluntarily relinquished his immortality and died. However, instead of being consigned to Hades, he was given a place amongst the stars by Zeus as the constellation Sagittarius or Centaurus. Chiron s name was derived from the Greek word for hand (kheir), which also meant skilled with the hands. The name was also closely associated in myth with kheirourgos or surgeon. Chiron The Centaur Acrylic on board, x 36cm 31

32 CYCLOPS The Cyclops were gigantic one eyed monsters. The most famous is Polyphemus, the Cyclops blinded by Odysseus. The Cyclops are generally mentioned as the sons of Uranus and Gaea, but Homer speaks of Polyphemus, the chief of the Cyclops, as the son of Poseidon, and states the Cyclops to be his brothers. They were a wild race of gigantic growth, similar in their nature to the earth-born Giants, and had only one eye each in the middle of their foreheads. They led a lawless life, possessing neither social manners nor fear of the gods, and were the workmen of Hephaestus, whose workshop was supposed to be in the heart of the volcanic mountain Aetna. The chief representative of the Cyclops was the man-eating monster Polyphemus, described by Homer as having been blinded and outwitted at last by Odysseus. This monster fell in love with a beautiful nymph called Galatea; but, as may be supposed, his addresses were not acceptable to the fair maiden, who rejected them in favour of a youth named Acis, upon which Polyphemus, with his usual barbarity, destroyed the life of his rival by throwing upon him a gigantic rock. The blood of the murdered Acis, gushing out of the rock, formed a stream which still bears his name. Cyclops Oil on canvas, x 60cm 32

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34 HERCULES AND THE CUP OF HELIOS Hercules was considered to be the greatest hero of ancient Greece. As a penance for murdering his wife and children Hercules was required to travel to the far-off western Mediterranean island of Erytheia, in order to obtain the sacred red skinned Cattle of Geryon. On Erytheia, Geryon kept the herd of red cattle which were guarded by Cerberus s brother, Orthus, a two-headed hound, and the herdsman Eurytion. On Hercules epic journey, he crossed the Libyan desert and became so frustrated at the heat that he shot an arrow at Helios, the Sun God. Amused by his passion and courage, Helios gave Hercules his golden chalice allowing him to reach Erytheia and to capture the Cattle of Greyon. Paul Reid s painting of Hercules depicts the moment when, exhausted, Hercules is washed up on the shores of the island moments before being attacked by Orthus and Eurytion. Hercules and The Cup of Helios Oil on canvas, x 81cm 34

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36 BIOGRAPHY 1975 Born Scone, Perth Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee First Class Honours in Drawing and Painting Awarded the Carnegie Trust Vacation Scholarship and a John Kinross Scholarship Studied in Madrid and Florence 2004 Accompanied His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales on a visit to Italy, Turkey and Jordan, completing a series of paintings and drawings based on the landscape and people of the areas visited 2009 Accompanied His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales on a visit to Canada SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2013 Mythologies The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh 2009 Paul Reid Isis Gallery, London 2008 Paul Reid - Touring Exhibition Perth City Art Gallery. Dundee University Art Gallery. Hull University Art Gallery st Century Painting 108 Fine Art, Harrogate 2004 Orion The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh 2002 New Works The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh 1999 Paul Reid The Rendezvous Gallery, Aberdeen 36

37 COLLECTIONS His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales Duke and Duchess of Roxburghe The Royal Scottish Academy Perth Museum and Art Gallery Perth and Kinross Council University of Dundee Museum Services Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art The Fleming Collection 108 Fine Art SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Mythologies. Derrick Guild & Jan Patience. The Scottish Gallery, 2013 The Dictionary of Scottish Painters, 1600 To The Present. Julian Halsby & Paul Harris, Birlinn Ltd, 2010 Paul Reid. Introduction by HRH Royal Highness Prince of Wales. Essay by Laura Gascoigne. 108 Fine Art, 2007 Six of the Best Painters Point the Way Forward. Iain Gale for Scotland on Sunday, 2005 A History of Scottish Art. Selina Skipwith & Bill Smith, Merrell, 2003 Myths Remade. Iain Gale for Scotland on Sunday, 2002 Paul Reid, New Works. Phillip Long, Senior Curator, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, for The Scottish Gallery, 2002 Art Tomorrow. Edward Lucie Smith, Terrail, 2002 Best of Young British. New Statesman, July 2002 Artists Eye. Art Review. Main feature, November 1998 Rising Stars in the Arts Firmament: Paul Reid. John Russell Taylor, The Times,

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