Roderick Fletcher Mead Explained

Roderick Mead
Birth Name:Roderick Fletcher Mead
Birth Date:25 June 1900
Birth Place:South Orange, New Jersey, U.S.
Death Place:Carlsbad, New Mexico, U.S.
Field:Painting, Engraving
Training:Yale University, Art Students League of New York, Grand Central School of Art

Roderick Fletcher Mead (1900–1971) was an American painter. Mead was best known for his engravings, but his work encompassed a number of media including oil paintings, prints, etchings, woodcut and also watercolors. He is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, among others.[1]

Born in South Orange, New Jersey in 1900, he attended Newark Academy, where he received instruction in art among other subjects, and graduated from Yale University in 1925 with a degree in fine arts. Having moved to New York City after college, Mead took instruction at the Art Students League of New York, including classes and later private instruction with painter George Luks. He also studied watercolor painting under George Pearse Ennis in the late 1920s at the Grand Central School of Art.

In the 1930s, Mead worked under printmaker Stanley William Hayter in Paris at Atelier 17, and was exposed to surrealism and abstraction in the work of artists such as Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, and Yves Tanguy.[2]

After the outbreak of World War II, Mead returned to the US and relocated to Carlsbad, New Mexico in the 1940s, where he took inspiration from the animals and plants of the surrounding high desert environment. He had a brief stint as an engraver for the Potash Company of America there in the 1950s.

In 2016, the Carlsbad, New Mexico Museum & Art Center created a small gallery dedicated to his work, with over 30 pieces on display.[3]

Mead passed away on May 5, 1971, at his home in New Mexico.

List of major works

One-Man Shows

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Cori Sherman . North . 31 March 2019. With the Grain: Presentation Prints of the Woodcut Society 1932-1954 . Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery.
  2. Web site: 2 December 2016. Roderick Mead: Looking Between the Lines . Roswell Museum & Arts Center.
  3. News: Jessica. Onsurez. January 8, 2016. Carlsbad Museum opens Mead gallery . Carlsbad Current-Argus.
  4. https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/80110 The Wooden Horse