Nat Meade

“NAT MEADE: DRAWINGS” OPENS SEPTEMBER 10TH

Exhibition at One Mile Gallery Is First Show of 

Brooklyn-based Artist’s Graphite-on-Paper Works

Nat Meade, Breaker, 2022, Graphite on paper, 7 5/8 x 6 3/8 in.

August 12, 2022: One Mile Gallery is pleased to announce the forthcoming exhibition “Nat Meade: Drawings,” which will be installed at the gallery’s space in Kingston, New York, on the weekend of September 10 and 11 (all works will also be available on Artsy). The exhibition is curated by Tod Lippy, who also designed a limited-edition catalog for the exhibition. A reception for Meade will take place at the gallery on Saturday, September 10, from 5 to 8 p.m. Gallery also open September 11 from 12-3pm.

The solo show will feature 24 never-before-exhibited graphite-on-paper works by the Brooklyn-based artist. Meade discusses the origins of this body of work in a statement in the accompanying catalog: “I started making these drawings in the spring of 2020. We were in triage mode in my day job and I began to draw during the hours-long stretches of Zoom meetings. They were a way for me to stay connected to my artistic practice, and to make more resolved work outside the studio. They have since become an instrumental part of my larger practice.”

Like the artist’s acclaimed paintings—most recently seen in his spring 2022 one-person exhibition at Hesse Flatow Gallery in New York, the focus of these drawings is on fatherhood and other masculine tropes, which Meade subjects to a near-forensic analysis. As Lippy described Meade’s work in his 2019 review in Artforum, “Meade’s works traffic in both the sacred and the profane in their attempt to embrace, dissect, and, on some level, destroy the father figures we all ultimately come to terms with, one way or another.” 

In the drawings, Meade submits these figures—nearly all sporting impossibly voluminous beards—to crashing waves, wind gusts, encroaching plant forms, and, in several works, decapitation. The medium of drawing has added a mesmerizing precision and deliberateness to Meade’s work, amplifying both the humor and the pathos in this remarkable artist’s trademark take on masculinity and gender. 

For more information or to inquire about purchasing work, please contact One Mile Gallery’s director, Janet Hicks, at onemilegallery@gmail.com.

ABOUT NAT MEADE:

Nat Meade is a Brooklyn-based painter and educator who 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. Meade received his B.F.A. from the University of Oregon and his M.F.A. from Pratt Institute. His work has shown in numerous group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally and has been reviewed in publications such as Artforum, Juxtapoz, the Boston Globe, and Hyperallergic. He attended the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in 2009, the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in 2016, the Siena Art Institute in 2018, and the James Castle House Summer Residency in Boise, Idaho, in the summer of 2021. Meade is represented by Hesse Flatow Gallery, New York. 

Buy the catalogue here

Nat Meade Drawings Catalogue