Bio

Early photo. Not a
good likeness.

Hello, My name is Malcolm Reid. I was born 7th July 1952. My fathers side of the family came from Scotland and my mothers side cam from Cornwall, hence I am a hybrid. I weary of the mundane humdrum world, so I endeavour to create my own through my surreal art. I feel there must be more to existence than is revealed to us through our senses, and that images from the mind are just as valid subjects for art as images of the external reality. Thoughts exist, so images in the mind are just as much part of reality as any external entity.

Creativity is important to me and I feel that if we go through this life without leaving anything behind (poetry, art, music etc.) as evidence we existed, then we have wasted our life, and our existance would have been pointless.

My early art would more correctly be described as sci-fi art, or visual jokes (though not very funny), but most of my recent work will have some element from the unconscious, either an image from dreams or from images which pop into my head without conscious intervention (surrealism).

My drawing and painting skills are entirely self taught, as my art lessons at school were completely meaningless, and consisted of things like sticking lumps of foam polystyrene onto hardboard, which meant nothing to me.

My art teacher became most annoyed when I said I wanted to be a surrealist. He believed all surrealists either became gay, went mad or committed suicide.

Creativity is different for everyone. If you give 100 poets a title for a poem, you would end up with 100 different poems. Just as all our fingerprints are different, our creativity is different. Salvador Dali described his paintings as ‘Hand painted dream photographs’. Magritte described his as ‘Unborn realities’. I think of my art as ‘Fingerprints of the mind’.