HANNAH SECORD WADE
SMALL QUEST
A solo exhibition of new paintings by Hannah Secord Wade
Exhibition Dates:
March 3, 2023 - April 21, 2023
Opening Reception:
Friday, March 3, 2023, 5:00-9:00pm
Artist Talk:
Saturday, April 15 @ 11:00am
Rivalry Projects is delighted to present our first solo exhibition of paintings by Maine-based artist Hannah Secord Wade. This exhibition is on view March 3 - April 21, 2023. Join us for an Opening Reception for this exhibit on First Friday, March 3, 2023 from 5:00-9:00pm. The artist will be present for a talk about her artwork at Rivalry on April 15, 2023 from 11:00 AM-12:00pm.
This exhibition presents eight new paintings by the artist from her Small Quest series. In these latest large-scale paintings, Wade takes the viewer on a journey through vignettes of fauna, bonfires, falling fruit, and characters she describes as “failed guardians”. Her palette for these works remains planted in the verdant green for which earlier paintings are known, while also extrapolating outward and asking us to dive off a cliff into heady, blue depths filled with eels, monuments, and rising water levels.
Wade describes her artistic process as being drawn from imagination, with a painting style that cycles between intuition and control. It is in this new series, Small Quest, that we see the artist’s hand loosening as environments and grottos are carved from space within the painting. Moments within each painting are marked by action, and this again speaks to the certainty and quickness of the artist’s hand. What also delineates this new body of paintings is its insistent engagement with ecology as a vehicle toward world building, while reckoning with the external realities of our own world’s degradation. Wade’s paintings within this exhibition hold space for ecology, and movement building from a place of quiet stillness.
Hannah Secord Wade, b. 1981, received her Master of Fine Art (MA) from Chelsea College of Arts, London, and her BA Fine Art from Hampshire College, Amherst. She has been a resident at the Arteles Creative Center (Finland), Open Wabi (Ohio), and The Sam and Adele Golden Foundation (New York). In 2020, her painting, Dog Fountain, was selected by Alex Katz for donation to the permanent collection of the Portland Museum of Art, courtesy of the Alex Katz Foundation. In 2022, the Farnsworth Art Museum acquired her piece, Underground, for inclusion in their permanent collection. Her work has been shown in London and Paris, and throughout the United States. She lives and works in Maine.
