Lisa Adams

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Lisa Adams bigraphy, stories - Painter, public artist

Lisa Adams : biography

1955 –

Lisa Adams is an American painter who emerged in the mid 1980s. She is best known for her oil paintings of imaginary worlds that address both personal and collective realities. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is in the public collections of Eli Broad, the San Jose Museum of Art, the Frederick R. Weisman Museum,http://ny.artslant.com/la/venues/show/1755-frederick-r-weisman-museum-of-art-at-pepperdine-university the Frederick R. Weisman Museum the Laguna Museum of Arthttp://lagunaartmuseum.org/ the Laguna Museum of Art and the Edward Albee Foundation.http://www.albeefoundation.org/ the Edward Albee Foundation She lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Work and Exhibitions

The Mire of Epiphany by Lisa Adams (2013) oil on panel, 48 x 60 inches.

Combining images of dystopic environments and unlikely human-built structures, Lisa Adamshttp://www.lisamakesart.com Lisa Adams website is best known for her oil paintings of imaginary worlds that address both personal and collective realities. Though her work is not directly about issues resulting from climate change, her paintings reference a significant shift in our thinking and our planet.

Lisa Adams’ work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is represented by CB1 Galleryhttp://cb1gallery.com/artists/lisa-adams.html CB1 Gallery in Los Angeles, where her solo exhibition Second Life runs through May 12, 2013 and was recently reviewed in the LA Times by Holly Myers.http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-art-review-lisa-adams-at-cb1-gallery-20130409,0,7547297.story Los Angeles Times review by Holly Myers

Lisa also blogs on Los Angeles art for the Huffington Post.

Almost A Forest by Lisa Adams (2012) oil on panel, 40 x 48 inches.

Early Influences and Work

Adams knew she would be an artist at age ten after seeing a reproduction of Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. She also recalls being fascinated by the Charles and Ray Eames short film Powers of Ten and by a Karl Benjamin non-objective painting when she was thirteen years old.

In 1981, shortly after graduating from the Claremont Graduate University, Adams and artist Craig Kauffman (with whom she was romantically involved at the time) moved to SoHo in New York City. She often referred to that time as her real education, where she was influenced by artists such as Susan Rothenberg and Julian Schnabel. Adams’ work was included in group exhibitions in the East Village and SoHo.

In 1985 after her split with Kauffman, she returned to Los Angeles and continued to pursue her career as a painter. Adams painted abstractly for over a decade, eventually experimenting with unconventional art materials, such as linoleum and caulking and she learned how to weld and woodwork, incorporating steel and shaped panels as elements integral to her paintings. She thought of her investigations into this hybrid form of artwork as “wall dependent” sculpture. Later in the early 2000s Adams received a Durfee ARC Granthttp://durfee.org/ Durfee ARC Grant to purse experiments in video work.

Public Art, Residencies and Special Projects

In addition to her studio practice Adams works on public art projects which have included the West Valley Branch Library, Reseda, California, the Fire Station No. 64http://www.box.net/shared/494mer31al Fire Station No. 64, Watts, Los Angeles in Watts, Los Angeles and her most recent public art project is the Chatsworth Stationhttp://thesource.metro.net/2012/02/03/art-for-the-orange-line-a-glimpse-of-stoney-point-park-by-lisa-adams/ Los Angeles Metro Orange Line Chatsworth Station for the Los Angeles Metro Orange Line Extension completed in June 2012.

As an artist-in-residence, Adams has lived and worked in Slovenia, Finland, Japan, Holland and Costa Rica and has traveled extensively throughout Europe and Asia.

She has worked as an independent curator, who in 2000, co-founded Crazy Space, an alternative exhibition space, in Santa Monica, California.