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ABOUT THE ARTIST

Bob Wade's images address the disconnect between the bedrock of the past and the warp speed of the present. His art furnishes the mind with an anchor that not only reconciles this dichotomy, but reveals many layers of reality beneath the evanescent flash of style. This genuineness, which gives his work its staying power, touches a chord not only with Westerners but with viewers the world over.

Wade brings together American history, which is about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and the latest contemporary art, which addresses pop iconography on a global level. With a light heart and a razor eye for significant cultural artifact, he illuminates certain aspects of our times by bringing to life their phenomenological roots.

This unique vision has been recognized internationally since the early days of Wade's career. He was invited to exhibit a piece at the 1973 Whitney Museum of Art Biennial in New York, and that same photo canvas is included in a 2008 retrospective at the Museum of the Southwest in Midland, Texas. His works hang in museums including the Menil in Houston, and in corporate collections including Chase Manhattan and AT&T. His forty-foot cowboy boots adorn a shopping center in San Antonio while his dancing frogs enliven the Carl's Corners truck stop on I-35. A twenty-foot saxophone is soon to adorn the music district in Austin. Dinosaur Bob, a character from a book, will grace the new National Center for Children's Illustrated Literature in Abilene, Texas. "Dino Bob" has a real Volkswagen in his mouth. These and other towering sculptures are as famous as Wade's canvases.

Wade combines old time craftsmanship with cutting edge technique. He chooses an existing image, usually from his vast collection of period photos and postcards, and begins a painstaking process of enlarging it and transferring it to canvas via digital technology.

With the black-and-white photograph reproduced on the canvas, Wade begins applying acrylic paint with an airbrush, emphasizing certain details with colors that evoke the hand-tinted postcards of yesteryear. By this process, he mysteriously teases out the beauty and meaning of the theme at hand, bringing it to life and furnishing an indelible imprint of the actual feeling inherent in the image.

Wade's subjects range from warmly human icons, such as cowgirls, cowboys, and movie stars, through oil well gushers and unusual cloud formations ("Marfa Stetson" is his own unaltered snapshot). His appetite for the odd and the ironic creates a never-ending stream of unorthodox vignettes. The exoticism and high humor of these works is balanced, however, by unselfconscious authenticity. Bob Wade tells it like it was, and like it is.

In addition to the exhibition at William Campbell Contemporary Art, "Daddy-O's Texas Tales: Selected Works by Bob Wade" will be exhibited from April 4 to June 1 at the Museum of the Southwest in Midland, Texas.

Bob Wade - Marfa Stetson

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday through Friday 10am-5:30pm
Saturday 11am-4pm
and by appointment

Please contact Pam or Bill Campbell at wcca@flash.net or at 817-737-9566 for more information.