Blade has presented solo exhibitions including Powerlong Museum (Shanghai), Asia Art Center (Beijing), Asia Art Center (Taipei), Loyal (Stockholm), Micki Meng (San Francisco), Wilding Cran (Los Angeles). Selected group exhibitions include Ju Ming Museum (New Taipei City), Xinjiang Art Museum (Urumqi, China), Marin MOCA (San Rafael, CA), Loyal (Stockholm), Loyal at El Royale (Los Angeles), Blum & Poe (Los Angeles), Simon Lee Gallery (London), The Bonnefanten Museum (Maastricht), Nassima Landau Foundation (Tel Aviv), WOAW Gallery (Hong Kong), The Torrance Art Museum, The Center for Contemporary Arts (Santa Fe), Make Room (Los Angeles), Spazio Amanita (Los Angeles), and Marin Museum of Contemporary Art (Novato, CA).
Michelle Blade (b. 1981, Los Angeles, CA) is a Los Angeles-based painter whose work explores time, memory, and the persistence of the natural world through intimate, autobiographical scenes. A third-generation Angeleno, Blade draws inspiration from her surroundings in Southern California, from lush gardens and desert landscapes to domestic interiors and moments shared with her two daughters, using these settings to examine care, stewardship, and the seasons of parenthood.
Blade’s practice is rooted in painting as a durational, intuitive process that mirrors the rhythms of lived experience. Drawing from daily life, she revisits landscapes, interiors, and familial encounters, allowing meaning to accumulate over time. Her paintings register moments as fluid states shaped by memory, emotion, and change, functioning as a form of visual archiving that unites personal history, generational continuity, and the cyclical patterns of the nature.
Blade is invested in myth-making on an intimate scale, as she coaxes out compositions with a symbolic resonance. Color functions both structurally and emotionally, forming harmonic relationships that guide us through her luminous fields. Within these spaces, she locates moments of transcendence grounded in lived reality, offering painting as a place where memory, emotion, and place exist in dynamic equilibrium.
Central to her work is a wet-on-wet technique with acrylic and ink on stretched cotton poplin. Working with thin, transparent washes, Blade allows the paint to bleed, bloom, and shift, producing luminous compositions where figuration and abstraction coexist. Figures and landscapes emerge vividly yet remain permeable, evoking the instability and openness of memory. Her depictions of movement, walking, climbing, observing suggest states of becoming as she shows pivotal moments of vulnerability, courage, and transition. The figures are not individualized through facial detail but are integrated into the landscape, functioning as universal, metaphorical archetypes.
Motherhood and the natural world are central to Blade’s vision. Her paintings consider care, risk, and stewardship, emphasizing coexistence and attentiveness rather than domination, an approach critics have described as the “maternal sublime.”
2003 BA, Loyola Marymount, Los Angeles, CA 1981 Born in Los Angeles, CA
2025
The River, Powerlong Art Museum, Shanghai
2024
Grace Electric, Asia Art Center, Beijing
2023
Between the Bones and Now, Micki Meng, San Francisco,
2023
Maker of Meaning, Asia Art Center, Taipei
2022
Blue Horse, Loyal Gallery, Stockholm
2020
Into the Forest, Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2025
Inner and Outer Worlds: International Contemporary Paintings Exhibition, Juming Museum, New Taipei Mirroring, Xinjiang Art Museum, Urumqi
2024
The Journey Before Me: Etel Adnan, Michelle Blade, Kristy Luck, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Marin, San Francisco, CA
2022
When the Sun Loses It's Light, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, CA
High Voltage 3, Nassima Landau Foundation, Tel Aviv
Summertime Rolls, La Loma Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Machines of Desire, Simon Lee Gallery, London Juggernaut, The Pit, Los Angeles, CA
2021
Urban Whisper, WOAW Gallery, Hong Kong
Urban Whisper, Make Room, Los Angeles, CA
My Secret Garden, Asia Art Center, Taipei
Ridiculous Sublime, SFA Advisory, New York, NY
From LA to Milan, F2T Gallery, Milan
2020
It’s a Sad & Beautiful World, Wilding Cran, Los Angeles, CA
Poem from Home, Jacob’s West, Los Angeles, CA
Track 16, If Everything is an Outrage, Los Angeles, CA
2019
The Pitt / Binder of Women, Collectio Release, Los Angeles, CA
2018
Project Space, David B. Smith Gallery, Denver, CO
2017
A Way to Say, Chandran Gallery, San Francisco, CA
New Suns, Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht 2016 Ritual Night, Left Field Gallery, San Luis Obispo, CA
Unseen, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA
BOOKS
Grade Electric
60 USD
Publisher: Asia Art Center Co., Ltd.
Dimensions: 24x30cm
pages: 96
Asia Art Center is proud to present Grace Electric, the exhibition catalog accompanying Michelle Blade’s first solo exhibition in China, held at our Beijing gallery in November 2023.
As the first American artist represented by Asia Art Center, Blade previously debuted in Taiwan with her solo exhibition at our Taipei space in January 2023. This publication marks an important milestone in our collaboration, offering a comprehensive record of her latest series showcased in Beijing. Featuring exhibition documentation, essays, and the interview, the catalog traces Blade’s artistic journey and explores how she continues to investigate the fluidity of light and color, as well as the intricate relationship between humanity and nature, at the intersection of Eastern and Western cultures.
More than just an exhibition record, this catalog extends the artistic dialogue between Blade and Asia Art Center, providing a deeper reflection on her creative practice. Known for her masterful use of wet-on-wet technique, Blade captures the fleeting qualities of light, allowing her compositions to shift between abstraction and representation—freezing ephemeral moments in layers of color and texture. Drawing inspiration from everyday landscapes and her personal experiences as a mother, she paints with a sense of wonder and intimacy. Whether portraying sunlit mountain ranges, moonlit lakes, or the gentle movement of plants in the wind, Blade’s work constructs a poetic, meditative space that invites viewers into an immersive visual experience.
This publication features an essay by Mariella Rudi, who delves into Blade’s distinctive approach to contemporary painting, framing her work through the concept of the “maternal sublime” and its interplay with themes of nature and time. Additionally, the book includes an insightful conversationbetween Michelle Blade and Hayley Barker, where the two artists discuss their creative processes, visual language, and the philosophical nuances of light and color. Through these texts and images, readers gain an intimate perspective on Blade’s artistic vision and the lyrical narratives embedded within her paintings.
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THE BLUE HORSE
Published for the occasion of Michelle Blade's solo exhibition "The Blue Horse" at Loyal.Publisher: Loyal
Editors: Martin Lilja and Amy Giunta
Text: Amy Giunta and Martin Lilja, Sasha Chapin
Photography: Edward Mumford, Jean-Baptiste Béranger
Design: Loyal and Zirke
Color: Italgraf
Edition: 200
Pages: 76
Dimensions: 30 x 25 cm
Language: English
ISBN 978-91-986148-1-7
© 2022 LOYAL First Edition
The Quarterly Report NO 3
Contributors include:
JON RUBIN, JENNY SHARAF, CAULEEN SMITH, ANDREW LELAND, DAVINA SEMO, ALONSO LUJÁN, MICHELLE BLADE
A publication of things people think about when they are not working. -Publisher
- PublisherThe Quarterly Report
- CityLos Angeles, CA
- Year2025
- Pages96 p.
- Dimensions26.7 x 21.6 cm.
- CoverPaperback
- BindingPerfect Binding
- ProcessOffset Printed
- ColorColor
- Edition Size700
- ISBN9798990664036
- Stock ID225872 C
- In stock atChelsea
Last Updated 24.10.37