Eddie Reed
- Michael Hanna
- May 27
- 2 min read
Eddie Reed is a socially-conscious mixed media artist who has exhibited mostly in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and is represented by Blackfish Gallery in Portland, Oregon. Notable exhibitions include dual solo features at Blackfish Gallery as well as collective shows at Onyx Gallery in Seattle, Salem On The Edge Gallery in Oregon, African American Museum and Gallery 110 in Seattle, Salishan Art Gallery in Lincoln City Oregon, King County Arts in Tacoma Washington, and the Birmingham Museum of Art. Eddie describes his art as reflecting “the deep interest in important but overlooked histories. In particular a longstanding engagement with issues of race, gender identity, social class, poverty”.
The mixed media paintings are heavily sociological in nature and engage in personalized conversations on how the artist as an individual interprets how institutional structures have impacted his community and identity. Eddie Reed incorporates text, smears of paint, texture, as well as photographic stenciling to convey an urban reality addressing pressing issues on how people of color have been statistically deprived through the advantages provided from the luxuries of the United States towards more fortunate segments of society.
Mixed with individual takes of American history, Eddie will often take anecdotes of situations where violent confrontations and other forms of financial as well as civic persecutions have taken place to people of color. His paintings reveal a world which tells the story of a dark, morbid history - a shadow timeline seldom told in a mainstream historical context. Through depictions of chains and skull-like figures amidst the backdrop of revealing text, the artist takes us on journeys through the civil rights movement, violent confrontations with hate groups, as well as the victims of globalization as well as unrestrained capitalism. Eddie’s smeared and stenciled application convey a narrative without formality, but rather steeped in individual emotional impulses and passion to share stories of disproportionate outcomes towards people of color, indigenous populations, the disabled, women, and the irony of mass portions of society in poverty within a country which remains the largest economy in the world.
Trap (pictured above) tells the brutal story of a couple, Harry T. and Harriette Moore, being murdered by the Ku Klux Klan for being members of the civil rights movement. The piece appears to emote screams through scribbled, almost incomprehensible and hastily written text smeared against what appears to be photographic newsprint underneath the surface. Photographs of a young man’s head fly with cartoonish wings and a dark silhouetted figure becomes bound by serpents. A heavily sociological piece which conveys some of the darkest parts of American history.
Eddie Reed recreates the story of American history to reveal the untold narratives of the dark underbelly lurching among polite society. For every success story, Eddie reminds us of the ones not so fortunate and institutionally-left-behind on the margins. He deconstructs institutional structures of formal storytelling into fragmented compositions with text, smears, and poignant symbolism which reveal a dynamic undertaking of the neglected people, regions, and neighborhoods of American society. Eddie’s work demands social change and enlightenment on the enduring power of visual poetry enhancing pressing matters of dialogue beyond formal methods of communication.
