Roderick Fletcher Mead

Mead was best known for his engravings, but his work encompassed a number of media including oil paintings, prints, etchings, woodcut and also watercolors.

He also studied watercolor painting under George Pearse Ennis in the late 1920s at the Grand Central School of Art.

In the 1930s, Mead worked under printmaker Stanley William Hayter in Paris at Atelier 17, and was exposed to surrealism and abstraction in the work of artists such as Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, and Yves Tanguy.

[2] After the outbreak of World War II, Mead returned to the US and relocated to Carlsbad, New Mexico in the 1940s, where he took inspiration from the animals and plants of the surrounding high desert environment.

In 2016, the Carlsbad, New Mexico Museum & Art Center created a small gallery dedicated to his work, with over 30 pieces on display.