Jim Reid was born in Toronto, Canada in 1955.  He obtained his B.F.A at Mount Allison University in 1982 after completing his B.Sc. at McMaster University.  He currently lives and works near Terra Cotta, Ontario.

The series of paintings “Travellers” (1999-2000) took it’s subject the glacial boulders deposited at random across the Canadian Shield.  These travelers are fragments of the original earth’s crust, broken from their primordial sites and transported perhaps thousands of kilometers by advancing glaciers.  Inscribed on their surfaces are the traces of a million unknowable events and now at an almost imperceptible pace, these travelers continue to change.  The paintings stress the language of their materials.  Emphasizing process, I built and scraped away layer after layer of paint and the resulting textures correlate with the organic processes of accretion and erosion.

Reid has exhibited widely in Ontario and nationally since 1984.  Recent solo exhibitions include “Ferals” at Lonsdale Gallery, Toronto and “Terraforms” at the Art Gallery of Peterborough, MacLaren Art Centre, Barrie and Burlington Art Centre.  His work was featured in the group exhibitions “Culture-Nature (The Metaphorical Instrument)” at Art Gallery of Hamilton; “Site Memory” at Macdonal Stewart Art Centre and Cleveland Centre for Contemporary Art, Ohio, U.S.A. and “The Romantic Landscape Now”, a national touring exhibition circulated by Artspace, Peterborough.  Reid’s work is in numerous museum and corporate collections such as Art Gallery of Peel, MacLaren Art Centre, The Art Gallery of Peterborough, Westin Hotels and Air Canada.