Mary Meng Wade was a California artist with a very special viewpoint. Her works show a deep involvement with the expressive impact of color as a state of being.
Born in California, her early education in Santa Barbara centered around music and the piano. Later, her intense interest in color made her turn to art and painting. As a graduate in art, Phi Beta Kappa, of Pomona Collage, Claremont, California, she received the Hanna Tempest Scholarship in art and the first large showing of her work. In 1988, she was given the honor of showing in the invitational Centennial Celebration of Pomona College Alumni Artists.
Her many one-person shows include: the University Galerie, Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo; the Bradley Gallery in Santa Barbara; the San Luis Obispo Art Association Gallery; the Hancock College Gallery, Santa Maria; and the Harlequin Gallery, Stockton. She has also shown at the Fairview Gallery, Santa Cruz; the Crocker Museum, Sacramento; the Gronbeck Gallery, Morro Bay; and the IDA Gallery in San Francisco. Her works are in many private collections throughout the United States.
“For me, color creates both form and line. Color dictates the direction in which a painting will go. I work with oils because the medium makes possible a subtle meditative process while painting. There is an organic quality in the growth of a painting, the need for time to elapse so that a direction that was not there yesterday becomes apparent today. Each day is a different place in time that has never been before and will never be again. So the layers of paint are a capturing of these moments in the personal psyche.”
