Lycaon's Cooks is Reid's interpretation of the Greek myth of Zeus and Lycaon. King Lycaon's cooks, having been ordered by him to prepare a stew of human remains, are left wondering how to go about this gruesome task. 

Paul Reid, born 1975

Reid, born in Scone, near Perth, trained at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee from 1994 to 1998. The college, unlike many art schools today, still focusses on the importance of drawing and painting in the development of an artist career. Reid is interested in the technicalities of painting and has studied carious manuals, including Doerner's The Materials for the Artist and their Use in Painting, learning the different drying times of paints. This has allowed him to adapt the colours he uses during preparations to suit his own working methods.
Travelling scholarships permitted Reid to study in Madrid and Florence. In Madrid he examined in depth the work of Velázquez, which was to prove influential on his own development. On the importance of Velázquez, he said in an interview in Art Review in 1999: "His treatment of modern mythology was unique in that he brought the gods down from the Olympian heavens into a reality closer to his own. The style in which he achieved this - a blend of classical nobility - has been as much an influence upon my work as the aforementioned context."
Since graduating Reid has attracted considerable attention both at home and abroad. He described in the same piece in Art Review how his ambition is to give Classical mythology a modern edge: "To my mind there is no right or wrong way to interpret classical myth, and it is this openness to new artistic interpretation which has no doubt contributed to its continued relevance throughout the history of art."