Landscape #18

Jim Reid (b. 1955)

Jim Reid is a contemporary painter best known for incorporating natural elements from his landscape subjects into his compositions. His process-based works, typically created on site in the outdoors, reveal a variety of Canadian landscape, from plains to forest areas to the Canadian Shield. Ihor Holubizky notes: “As he works on site, Reid allows nature to take its course, to show the accumulation, traces and scars, the evidence of erosion rather than the prettiness of ‘texturing’.” He has been likened to the “plein air” painting of the 19th and 20th centuries. However, Reid brings an environmental sensibility to his work. The incorporation of both man-made and natural materials speaks to the relationship we have with the land we live on, as the Canadian landscape continues to yield to urban expansion. Jim Reid’s work has been widely exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and is represented in numerous public and private collections in Canada.