KnotWood 16

DIMENSIONS 12 x 8 in (30.48 x 20.32 cm) MEDIUM Gouache, archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle  hemp paper with hand-torn deckled edge

Hand-finished edition of 20 + 3APs + 2PPs, 2022
Signed, dated and titled by the artist en verso 

ABOUT THE WORK
"The subjects of my paintings are meant to be elevated and beatific and at the same time buffoonish and absurd. In my childhood home was a woodcut of a bearded Walt Whitman.  When I was a kid, this simple image with its triangle nose and series of dashes for a beard loomed large. It looked just like my dad, and in my head was both God and father, which at the time were the same thing. My work deals with this kind of elevated personage and its frailty.  

In ‘KnotWood’ I use shadow and pattern to obscure, play with, and undermine the bearded figure." - Nat Meade

Brooklyn based painter and educator Nat Meade uses his work to reflect on the complex feelings that surround the experience of moving through different phases of life.  The figures in Meade’s paintings become stand-ins for himself in his investigation of the experience of becoming an adult, husband, and parent, each character viewed through the dual lens of self-scrutiny and societal expectation.