Zig-Field 1970

Paul Reed made Zig-Field using screen printing. He must have delighted in the way the squeegee pushes the ink through the mesh, leaving behind these perfectly flat, opaque fields of color! I am drawn to the way the shapes lock together, creating a visual puzzle. It’s hard to know what came first. Did he begin with a fully formed idea, or did the composition emerge through a process of trial and error, each color suggesting the next? These flat, bold colors—pink, green, blue, and purple—vibrate against the creamy white ground. It reminds me a little bit of Ellsworth Kelly's hard-edged abstraction, but Reed brings something else, a kind of playful optimism. We can imagine that in his studio, the process of combining these shapes and colors, led him to unexpected places, opening up new possibilities. And this is what painting is all about, right? Artists building on each other’s ideas, pushing the boundaries, and inspiring new ways of seeing and experiencing the world.