MAX WADE creates paintings that are built through negative space around formal elements taken from his day-to-day life and travels. His works are autobiographical, beginning from his sketchbooks. The drawings start as mundane observations, often focusing on “spaces in between” rather than on an object itself. While the original marks are garnered directly from drawings of his everyday environment, through his painting process Wade reduces these sketches to their critical forms and their negative space. Wade scales them up, simplifies the motifs, rotates, and distorts them, allowing the works to depict a layered, imagined landscape where plains interchange and motifs are obscured.
Max Wade was born in 1985 in London. Wade studied Fine Art Painting at Brighton University. Wade’s recent solo exhibitions include; ‘Go Bang’, Sid Motion Gallery, London, UK 'Whisper Down the Lane', Sid Motion Gallery, London, 2021; ‘Sowing the Soil with Salt’, Sid Motion Gallery, London, 2020; ‘Platform: London’, hosted by David Zwirner (online), 2020; ‘ Wind for the Sails’, Messums Wiltshire, Salisbury, 2020; ‘Between the Dog and the Wolf’, Sid Motion Gallery, London, 2019; ‘For Tina’, curated by Roxie Warder hosted at Cob Gallery, London, 2019. Recent group exhibitions have included ‘Abstract Colour’, Marlborough Gallery, 2023. ’Stand with Ukraine', Hales London, 2022. His residencies include Artist’s workshop & exchange, Muscat, Oman, Muscat, Gasworks gallery & Triangle network 2013. Wade lives and works in London.