Michael Eade, Pine Tree Sapling (Small) (part), 2019. Egg tempera, raised 22k gold leaf, raised copper and aluminum leaf on wood panel, 17.1 x 13.8 inches ©Michael Eade, courtesy of Fou Gallery

 

Solo Exhibition

Past is Present is Future

 

Past is Present is Future

Artist: Michael Eade

September 21–November 10, 2019

Curator: Lynn Hai

The exhibition showcases Michael Eade’s works that explore the broad themes of creation, rebirth, renewal and the cycles of life. Throughout the collection of 19 paintings and 12 sculptures, viewers are drawn into lush, dreamy otherworldly landscapes. Eade’s vision of nature is close up and highly detailed. He takes great care to carefully individualize each leaf, branch, plant, and blade of grass, which all come together in a lusciously dense composition, often anchored by age-old towering tree trunks. 

In Tree of Life Reflected (2018),  Eade’s iconic “Tree of Life” towers over a lake. Flowers on the opposite bank obscure the reflection of its leaves and a wild apple branch comes in from the side. His rendering of this tree is inspired by his study of the ancient fruit forests found in Kazakhstan and the western border of China. These endangered forests are considered the genetic origin of apples and over 300 other fruits and nuts on our planet, and thus are a literal “Garden of Eden”. Because the apple is a potent symbol with different meanings in many world cultures and intending to eulogize these forests, Eade’s “Tree of Life” is fecund with exquisite gilded golden apples. Robust and full of life, the tree’s anthropomorphic branches reach out and give life to the land and forest.

Methuselah (2019) is his rendering of the “Methuselah Tree,” a real bristlecone pine found in the mountains of eastern California. Over 4,800 years old, this tree is among the longest-lived life forms on earth. Bristlecone pines thrive where most other plants cannot even grow, such as in rocky soils and areas with virtually no rainfall. Eade’s Methuselah honors this magnificent tree by giving it center stage on the canvas, enlarging its scale and painstakingly gilding both the sprouting and fully developed leaves. “For me, Methuselah represents longevity and the timelessness of nature when it is in balance,” explains Eade.  

Other works such as Change of Season, No. 2 (2016) showcase Eade’s mastery of naturalistic detail, where intertwining leaves and branches shine in radiant greens, golds, reds and brown hues. In his Sunset and Gilded Nurse Log (2017), a fallen, decaying old-growth tree provides safe harbor and food for the emergence and sustainability of a different generation of plants. Additionally, always exploring alternative mediums, Eade has extracted his nurse logs and stumps out of his paintings to create editions varie (EV) in porcelain.

Pine Tree Sapling (Small) (2019) is from a new series Eade started this year depicting the renewing power of fire. In the painted scene, green saplings sprout from and around a burnt and destroyed trunk. Eade is very aware that fire has the power to utterly destroy as seen in the recent megafires in California and Brazil’s devastating broad clearing of the rainforest. However, as we see in his paintings, naturally burning forest fires clear the forest floor and provide nutrients for surviving plants and newly sprouting life, thus maintaining the timelessness of the cycle of life.  

In all of his work, Eade purposefully leads viewers into a vibrant and splendid Utopia of Nature - a sign of what we could lose as we continue to threaten our environment. Within the worlds he depicts, vivid leaves, flowers, and fruits are all suspended in a state where time-lapses and an instant becomes eternal - levitating in every moment of the past, present and future.  

Text / Lynn Hai

 

Exhibition Catalogue

 
Sunset and Gilded Nurse Log, 2017. Egg tempera, raised 22k gold leaf, raised copper and aluminum leaf, oil on wood panel. 11.5 x 48 inches ©Michael Eade

Sunset and Gilded Nurse Log, 2017. Egg tempera, raised 22k gold leaf, raised copper and aluminum leaf, oil on wood panel. 11.5 x 48 inches ©Michael Eade

Artist - Michael Eade

b. 1957, Portland, Oregon

Received a BA from Oregon State University and did further studies at the Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenen Kunste, Stuttgart (studying egg tempera painting techniques), and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (studying film and computer animation techniques). He has received many honors including a residency at the Hermitage Artists’ Retreat, a studio membership at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, and fellowships from the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, the National Academy Museum and School of the Fine Arts, Artists’ Fellowship Inc., and Aljira. Eade’s work appears in public and corporate collections including the Harvard Business School, HERMÈS, AT&T, the Library of Congress Permanent Collection and many private collections. In 2017, Michael Eade had his first solo exhibition at Fou Gallery (New York) - Realms o of the Soil.