About
Martha Meade is a Los Angeles based artist who works VERY LARGE on murals and much smaller on canvas. Attracted to and excited by the forms nature gives to living things, she celebrates their shapes and stills them for contemplation. Whether in oils on canvas or acrylics on walls, her work has been described as being infused with a kind of energy or inner light.
Statement
A wise man, Ralph Pendleton, once asked me if I felt worthy of the calling to be an artist. (The specific art he was referring to was acting, but I have learned that art translates from one form to another.) He explained what a privilege it was -- that everything you ever learn, everything you truly experience becomes a part of you, and through you, a part of your art.
I had never before thought of my work that way, and have never thought of it any other way since. His words have stayed with me, and I continue to strive to be worthy of the calling, to live fully and to express the beauty I find around me.
I am inspired by the act of seeing. As a child, I became very near-sighted. Monet's paintings in the MFA in Boston were a revelation: the paintings of haystacks with their soft, blurry edges glowing with light captured the way I saw the world without my glasses. Monet's work was magical to me.
I became an actress and brought others' words to life, searching within to find the truth of their visions. Later, as a muralist, I did the same with other people's concepts, translating ideas into visual expression. But in my own work, painting on canvas, I engage in the deeper challenge of realizing my own visions and making them accessible to others through paintings.
Painting in oils on canvas has taught me to see with intention, to cherish details and edges, sunlight and shadow, stillness and movement. I also bring an actor's sensibility -- seeking singular beauty (without judgment) in those things that capture my interest. I delight in being able to recreate on canvas the way I experience that beauty, and thus share it with viewers.
As I continue to explore, I find myself playing with both precision and blurriness, especially with the play of light on ripples in a stream or the movement of pelicans over the waves.
Solo Shows:
2015 "Ripples, Reflections and What Lies Beneath," Pacific Palisades Library, Pacific Palisades, CA
2014 "Public Art, Private Visions," Pacific Palisades Library, Pacific Palisades, CA
2013 "Public Art, Private Visions," Malibu Stage Company, Malibu, CA
Group Shows:
2024: "Bloom", Shoebox Projects at the Brewery Arts Complex, Los Angeles, CA
2023: "Revolutionary: the Feminine Perspective Beyond 50", the Fresh Eye Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
2017 "Quiet", Linus Galleries, Long Beach, CA
We are announcing the accepted artists to our Quiet Call for Entries! You can view the accepted art in the video below. Thanks to all who submitted, and if you were accepted, share this video with your friends!#art #artshow #artshows #artgallery #artgalleries #quiet
Posted by Linus Galleries on Monday, February 13, 2017
2015. "Expressions of Death: Dying, Grief and Life After", Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada
2015 - 2016 Member of Ten Women Gallery, Santa Monica, CA