On the occasion of the exhibition Paul Reed and the Shaped Canvas in the 1960s at D. Wigmore Fine Art, New York (through Novemebr 16), Deedee Wigmore writes about the shaped canvases of Paul Reed and the Washington Color School painters including: Gene Davis, Kenneth Noland, and Thomas Downing.

Wigmore notes that "unlike New York’s Color Field art, Washington’s version was geometry-based. The flow of color and intervals of blank raw canvas softened the geometric-based structures of their compositions and kept them from becoming hard-edged. To get beyond the all-over compositions associated with Pollock, the Washington artists developed centralized compositions full of flowing movement. In their development of geometric Color Field painting, some of the Washington Color Painters also participated in the shaped canvas movement of the 1960s… Paul Reed’s shaped canvases … comprise the most complex shapes created by the Washington Color Painters."