LAUCHIE REID
“Rublev Colours opened up a piece of history and painting that I wasn’t aware I was missing.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Lauchie Reid is a Toronto, Canada-based painter, illustrator, and educator. Focused primarily on portraiture, landscape, and still life, his work explores the role of traditional oil painting as a relevant and timeless method of celebrating human achievement while rejecting the notion of reserving these rites to specific social roles and classes.
The juxtapositions of historical technical processes against contemporary technology, outmoded aesthetics, a bizarre sense of humor, and a pleasantly melancholic view of the psychological and emotional underpinnings of nostalgia all play significant roles in his picture making practice.
LAUCHIE REID
ARTIST STATEMENT
As a person I’ve always had a fascination with history, particularly finding a connection to it and a sense of familiarity and humanity within the works of the past. My paintings aim to draw in the viewer by employing the visual context of the past and the ambiguities of the present to create images that incite a deeper interest in who we are and have been. If they find them funny, that’s nice too!
As an image-maker, this fascination drives me to create work as authentic to the traditions that fascinate me as is possible. Understanding every step of the process in a way that the modern commercial art industry makes difficult has led me to become an atelier of one, creating my paintings—from support to frames—from the ground up.
Finding Rublev Oil Colors was a revelation; they felt instantly familiar, the way I had always felt oils should feel. The attention to craftsmanship, the historically accurate pigments and the range of tones found nowhere else opened up a piece of history and painting that I wasn’t aware I was missing.
