Walter Wade Welch was born in Montgomery, Alabama. He moved to New Orleans in 1983 to manage the 927 Art Gallery in the French Quarter. Welch emerged as a serious artist in the 1980s. His whimsical, highly detailed pen and ink drawings were exhibited in New Orleans and Baton Rouge galleries and published in a wide variety of magazines, newspapers and books. The strikingly original drawings showcased the world of the "Mugwumps," Wade's idiosyncratic tribe of sharp-featured grande dames, domineering children, rotund captains of industry, over-confident hostesses, befuddled art patrons and unlikely philosophers of daily life. His work is in many private collections as well as the Louisiana State Museum and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.