David Reed is known as a colorist and for creating long, narrow abstract paintings on canvas that are hung either lengthwise or vertically and feature several images resembling enlarged photographs of swirling brushstrokes juxtaposed in a single painting.

[2] Reed's paintings are engaged in a crossover between film, the electronic media and everyday culture.

For his project "Two Bedrooms in San Francisco," Reed inserted images of his paintings into scenes from Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (film), which take place in the bedrooms of the film's two main characters, Judy and Scottie.

[6] David Reed was the adviser for the exhibition High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975 curated by Katy Siegel, which traveled to Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro in North Carolina from August 6 to October 15, 2006; Katzen Arts Center at American University in Washington, D.C., from November 21, 2006, to January 21, 2007; National Academy of Design in New York City from February 15 to April 22, 2007; Tamayo Contemporary Art Museum in Mexico City from May 25 to September 9, 2007; Neue Galerie Graz in Graz from December 14, 2007, to February 24, 2008; and Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe in Karlsruhe from March 28 to June 1, 2008.

He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine, in 1966 and the New York Studio School in New York, where he studied primarily with Milton Resnick as well as Mercedes Matter and Esteban Vicente while on a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in 1967.