Harry Wade
Harry Wade is an abstract artist based in Cornwall. After graduating from Falmouth University with a Fine Art degree, he chose to remain local and continue working out of Penryn, a nearby historic market town on the Penryn River.
His paintings are characterised by structural forms that foreground colour as a language to express emotion. These elements are frequently infused with expressive qualities, reflecting the artist’s need to break free of preconceived ideas of how the work should appear.
Naturally, people absorb their surroundings; the mind, a canvas coloured by experience. So it is no surprise that Cornwall’s art heritage and landscape seep into Wade’s work. Whether a muted, wintery palette, or intense ocean-blues and energetic yellows, something of lived experience permeates through the painting, and speaks of its viscerality.
Untitled (2022) acrylic, pencil, chalk and charcoal on cotton canvas, 100 x 80cm, £1,545
Untitled (2022) acrylic and charcoal on cotton canvas, 80 x 60cm, £1,195
SOLD: Untitled (2022) acrylic on cotton canvas, 75 x 51cm
Untitled (2022) acrylic on cotton canvas, 51 x 51cm, £795
Untitled (2022) acrylic, chalk and charcoal on cotton canvas, 80 x 60cm, £1,195
SOLD: Acrylic & charcoal on canvas board, 40 x 30.5 cm (16 x 12 in)
3 Minutes with Harry…
Where do you draw inspiration from? People, places or things?
My work is expressive and a lot of the inspiration emerges indirectly. When I say that, I mean I’m not actively thinking of subject matters when I’m painting, and I’m not exploring them before painting. But that’s not to say there’s no start point or origin, more that it’s something that comes out of the process, almost in a way that’s beyond my control. The material of the inspiration is my experience of the world and the emotions that follow.
There are a couple exceptions but most of the time, it’s a process of playing and feeling out the painting. Sometimes it can be motivated by a strong emotion coming first, but otherwise it’s about exploring the language of what I’m doing. I’m often just waiting for myself to feel something from the painting and when I do, it all clicks and the idea is almost ‘given’ to me. I probably have to echo Agnes Martin’s thoughts on all this: I have no ideas of my own; inspiration offers them. I guess I can guide or encourage this process but there’s nothing exact about it.
Where is your favourite place to create art?
It depends on how I’m feeling. As I’m writing this, I’m working out of my house in Penryn, Cornwall. I have a moderately sized spare room that gets a good amount of light and which also has a wooden floor. A carpet floor would have been a total nightmare with the amount of paint now needing to be removed - just don’t tell my landlord before I sand it all away! I also have the option of working out of a small studio room at a quarry in Mabe, home to the Quarryhouse Collective (check them out!). It’s just up the road and this new location is a recent development.
I tend to jump between these two sites. Each offers something the other can’t. The quarry is great because there’s that element of getting out to go to work. Sometimes that’s really important: you can get lost in your own head working from home. And then there’s the benefit of being around other artists making work, something that has great emotional and creative benefits.
But that’s also the reason I sometimes choose to work from home. I quite like being on my own and having mental space. It’s good to be able to quickly swap to doing admin work which I can’t do if I’m out and about. And I like having my paintings at home, because I can play around putting them in different places.
There’s pros and cons to both. I’m fortunate to have two options at the moment and I’m making a point of working as hard as I can to justify that situation. Eventually, I’d love to just have one large space, perhaps a warehouse or an old barn. The bane of my practice is forever running out of places to hang and store paintings.
Where would you most like to travel to and why?
Patagonia has been on my Radar for a very long time. It strikes me as raw and wild. I'm really drawn to landscapes like that, they make you feel alive. A place like that would really challenge me.
On the flip side, nothing sounds bad about taking a surf trip to Lanzarote! Its landscape is stunning and I absolutely love Spanish culture. The food is great, the people are, and I love roaming around when everyone’s taking their siesta.
I guess with travel I’m pretty simple: give me mountains or give me waves. I’m not really a city-goer but there are a few I will visit someday: New York, Mexico City, Barcelona, Tokyo and Stockholm, come to mind.