Northern Daughters gallery in Vergennes welcomes “Everything All Together,” a solo exhibit of large scale oil paintings from Hannah Secord Wade. The exhibit features Wade’s newest work from her current project. Wade’s loose gestures and repeated color palette create a visually pleasing body of work.  Arranged on a consistent horizon her work is composed of recognizable elements, seemingly discarded from a still life, and unrecognizable bits that are blurred or partially buried. 
“‘Everything All Together’ began as a hoarding of landscape, with scraps of earth and debris gathered into large mounds, and contained for a time,” Wade explained. “Each piece depicts an action, as land is moved and shifted, contained and then cleansed.”
She describes a cycle through which the mounds decompose or wash away and must be continuously rebuilt.  Her work stirs a feeling of constant motion as things are piled, buried, submerged, washed away and then piled again.
“The works are an effort to organize my surroundings into manageable spaces, and gain a sense of control,” the artist said. “The washing away is an acknowledgement of the futility of this effort, and empties the stage for the process to begin again.  Each work is built layer by layer, as fruit, flowers, and objects are formed and erased.  Some pieces are completed in a few weeks, while others take over a year.” 
The work that Wade does to organize the entirety of her surroundings produces seemingly haphazard mounds, not anything categorically sorted, but this beautifully morphing contained chaos. In an effort to depict an outer world, she paints an inner landscape that may very well have taken on a life of its own out of her control. Regardless there is a certain excitement to the business of these piles, the viewer is easily seduced into imagining their contents, their morphing and the continual process of their recreation.
Hannah Secord Wade received her Masters in Fine Art from Chelsea College, London, and her Bachelors from Hampshire College, Amherst, Mass.  Her work has been shown in London and Paris, and throughout the United States.  In 2016 she was a resident at the Arteles Creative Center in Finland.  She lives and works in Maine. 
“Everything All Together” is on view at the gallery’s 221 Main Streeet location in Vergennes from March 15-April 29 with an opening reception on Friday, March 23, from 5-8 p.m.
For more info visit northerndaughters.com, email [email protected] or call (802) 877-2173.