ENIGMA – THE ART OF WILLIAM WALLACE REID S. Duncan Reid12 x 10 PB • 126 Pgs • $60.00 • ISBN 978-1-60052-183-6
The art and graphic design studio of William W. Reid, my father, was on the bottom floor of our 1876 Victorian on 194 Connecticut Street, San Francisco. He spent a good deal of time in the studio and I couldn’t resist venturing into his domain periodically. One day, at the age of fourteen, I went down there and noticed “Lester Leaps In,” on display, a large painting that I had never seen before, and said: “Dad, that looks like two different paintings.” He replied, “Well, I could cut it in half.” Before I left he told me that, down the road, he would give me the half of the painting with Lester Young, as he knew I was partial to it. On the other half is an androgynous looking woman bound up in a bizarre, surrealistic fashion. In the end, one painting did become two and the memory is a special one because my father didn’t take up my ideas very often.
