Biography

In 1985 Guy Reid began training as a classical carver and restorer. He went on to work for the world renowned Spink workshop, where he completed work for institutions as varied as the Metropolitan Museum New York, The Getty Museum California, Harewood House and The Sir John Soane Museum London.

Reid’s lime wood carvings are often partially painted or left in the natural wood. He works from both live models and photographs. The originality of Guy’s work lies partly in this marriage of traditional practice and photography. The artist has stipulated that whilst his carving draws on traditions of European gothic and early renaissance lime wood sculpture, it is the photographic basis of his work which gives his sculptures an astounding similarity that the medieval sculpture could never achieve.

Guy Reid lives and works in the countryside South of Toulouse. Silence, place, time and space, rhythm and discipline remain central to his work. Reid’s reputation was established in the 1990s with his first solo show in the summer of 1999 receiving strong reviews. Other exhibitions followed in London, Manchester, Yorkshire, Birmingham, Liverpool, New York, Miami, Toulouse and Paris.

He has recently been commissioned to do two portraits of the writer Philip Pullman. These are the first in a series of seven children’s author and illustrator portraits commissioned by the publisher David Fickling. The second subject is Dame Jacqueline Wilson, and the third the writer and illustrator Nick Sharratt.

You can see a short film by Margot Donk about the making of the Philip Pullman piece here.

All photography by Francois Deladerriere