Andy McCluskey remembers vividly the first time he came up close and personal with a Maurice Wade painting. The Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark co-founder was at a gallery in Hale, Cheshire, enquiring about a different artwork altogether when it stopped him in his tracks. “I walked in and there it was, BOOM!” he says. “His paintings have a resonance for me on so many levels: the stark sense of black and white, the industrial landscapes, the melancholy … I just went, ‘Woooah.’”
And then?
