KRISTIN REED

ARTIST STATEMENT/BIO:

My work explores space, time and consciousness while remaining firmly rooted in a compassion for the earth. As I seek inner knowledge, I uncover a striking resemblance between the expansive reaches of distant galaxies and the most minute particles and waves of our natural world. Both realms adhere to the same simple and sacred geometries of circles.

My inspiration comes from simplified theories of quantum physics, the captivating imagery transmitted by deep space telescopes and the healing knowledge of ancient shamanic traditions and their symbolic language of nature. A geometry is revealed that describes our planet and its place in the cosmos.

These sources appear in my work through the use of expressionistic light, luminous color, violently splattered and softly sprayed paint, liquid drips, dots and sometimes collaged elements from our daily reality. I draw with a compass, protractor and straight edge and then mindfully paint precise lines with a brush. My process is both expressionistic and meditative and in it I see an inner reality within a vast enveloping cosmic reality, where the wild and chaotic balance with serenity and peace.

Kristin Reed has a BFA from MassArt in Boston and an MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. In the 1980s she made street art with stencils, posters and billboards and directed a project in the MTA’s Creative Stations program to create a gallery space within the Bleeker Street Subway station. Reed painted several large public murals on The Lower East Side, The Tilles Performance Center on Long Island, in Erie, PA, and Nicaragua. Her paintings traveled for three years to major US museums with The Smithsonian Institute’s Traveling Exhibition program (SITES) in an exhibition entitled “The Realm of the Coin.” A street billboard shown at The DIA Foundation in 1986 for a project by Martha Rosler, was more recently shown in The Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, Mitchell-Inness and Nash Gallery in NYC and at The Glasgow Women’s Library during the 26th UN Climate Change Conference in 2021. Reed currently has a studio residency with Chashama in the Brooklyn Army Terminal. She is a Reiki Master/Teacher, practicing and teaching energy healing. She worked with a group that exchanges knowledge with indigenous Maya and Amazonian populations, training them to run their own acupuncture and Reiki clinics. Her work as a healer has dramatically affected her painting.