Lisa Reid

Lisa Reid: The Devil's in the Detail, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2015

Reid has been identified as one of Australia's key artists within the Outsider Art category, as can be evidenced by her inclusion in major Outsider Art exhibitions and fairs in Australia and the USA. Prompted by the inclusion of her portrait of the art collector and artist Peter Fay in the Salon de Refusés in 2008, the artwork was reproduced in Art Monthly Australia, where then-editor Maurice O’Riordan – referring to both artist and subject – described it as "an eloquent statement of triumph against ‘established’ odds." In 2016 her work was included in Painting. More Painting at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and her work has also been acquired for the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.

In an autobiographical digital animation entitled My Story, Reid presents her childhood as one marked by bullying in mainstream education and complains that her forays into "special education" were also unsatisfactory, with educators making no effort to teach her literacy. Following her graduation from a transitional TAFE course, she describes her experience working in a factory setting as "slave labour." More positive experiences are present in Reid's autobiographical opus – chiefly her talent for swimming (she has been a competitor and finalist in the Special Olympics since the age of fifteen) and art. Since 2000 she has been working at the studio at Arts Project Australia (APA), an organisation devoted to supporting and promoting artists with an intellectual disability. Although no formal fine art training is provided at APA, her participation in the studio program there has provided her with access to fine art materials and the informal tuition provided by the practicing artists employed by the organisation. During the formative early years of residency at the studio, her paintings and drawings presented muted, monochromatic, anonymous figures, sourced from magazines and newspapers. In 2002 a family photograph album became a pivotal source in developing Reid's work, providing her with the source material for a personal narrative as her subject matter. During this time she also attended a life drawing class at RMIT University and began to develop her meticulous signature style.

Lisa Reid (born in 1975 in Melbourne) is an Australian artist, known primarily for her highly detailed figurative works in a variety of mediums. Reid has worked from her Northcote-based studio at Arts Project Australia since 2000, where she held her first solo show in 2015. She has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally and her work was recently selected for the landmark exhibition Painting. More Painting, at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Her work is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.