Meade's painting surfaces show many layers of building up and accumulating paint. This process of accumulation and layering helps me to feel as if I am watching Meade create the scenes on the surface. Building the characters from them. The colors glow and interact, especially places where light should be; for example, a household ceiling light, or sunlight cast upon the front of the porch. Meade's use of cast shadows also pulls you in; noticing shadows on legs or illuminating parts of the figure, which also casts a warmth over them. With this placement of the sun and light in the compositions and the building up the surfaces, Meade helps me feel the sense of passing time. The undeniable progression of life moving forward.
Many of the works in this exhibition revolve around Meade’s reflections on his relationship with his father after his recent passing, and his own recollections on his role as a parent. Vulnerability, pain, and mortality are themes Meade encapsulates very well within the works. His characters emanate several emotions: somberness, inquisitiveness, and hope. His older figures, often somber, appear to be seeking something of themselves or looking outward. Such as in the work titled Porch, the older figure seemingly floating between existence- whether it is life or death, we cannot tell- he is on the precipice. He watches a younger figure in the foreground who appears to be sleeping, dreaming in the sunlight, seemingly free from burdens that life has yet to place upon him. While an apparition of the man appears as an aside- leaving me to wonder if the apparition is judging the man, who is near death, for what he has done, or perhaps, what he has left unfinished. A longing for more time to complete what one desires, which is foiled with the potential and possibility of the young man’s life ahead of him that Meade brings into the piece as a focus point.
