Transient Curated is pleased to present Pan Noir, a series of new digital paintings by Paul Reid. The series follows Pan, the Greek god of the wild, set loose in the present day. Salute and Lament are the first two works from the collection.
Reid works in both physical and digital painting. The works in Pan Noir are painted entirely digitally, built up from loose sketches into fully rendered paintings. The process is visible in the work: the texture of a canvas ground runs through each piece, with the subjects and scenes rendered in black and white, as the ‘Noir’ in the title suggests.
Created in interludes between works in Ariadne’s Thread, Reid’s series following the story of an imagined escape of the Minotaur, Pan Noir represents a departure in a number of ways. Using a monochrome palette, Reid returns to the modern setting, creating a stronger contrast between his title character and the scenes he hinds himself in. This contrast is a device Reid has used in the past, whether it be a cyclops outside a factory, or a previous colored portrait of Pan against a graffiti-covered brick wall.
In Salute, Pan stands in a stone doorway, one arm raised with fingers outstretched creating the ‘sign of the horns’, holding a Thyrsus, an ancient staff typically carried by Dionysus. In Lament, he stoops over the gnarled roots of a fallen tree, head bowed. The same figure, recognisable by his goat's head and human body, but dressed in modern clothes. In his purely mythological works, Reid lures modern viewers into a world of mystery, In Pan Noir, he brings a mysterious subject into our world, with all the uncertainty and dangers that entails.
CURATED