Metaphors & Mysteries opens Aug. 5 at Point Gallery in Denver

Adams-There Are No Words-
There Are No Words, 48 x 48 inches, acrylic & mixed media on panel, ©2016 Deidre Adams

This painting is part of my upcoming exhibition:

Metaphors & Mysteries

Aug. 5-31, 2016
Point Gallery
765 Santa Fe Drive, Denver, Colorado

I hope my local friends will join me for the opening reception this Friday! If you can’t make it this Friday, I will also be there giving an artist’s talk on Aug. 19, starting at 6:30. Here’s my artist statement for this show:

What does it mean to be human? Are we here as part of some grand design, put here on Earth by a benevolent creator? Or are we just the result of a random series of events involving tiny particles of space dust and electricity?

As human beings have evolved, we have developed various systems to help us make sense of our world. Language, mathematics, science, physics, artwork, music, philosophy, religion and more help us to understand, record, and communicate the lived experience of being human. Yet the more we discover, the more it seems we realize we have so much still to learn. As Carl Sagan said, “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

And as we go through our lives, we feel compelled to leave traces of our existence, from the simplest hand-drawn markings on wood or stone to the most complex technological creations. We want someone else to know, “I was here.” My paintings are my own way of making sense of this world.

More information is available on the Point Gallery website.

Here are some detail views of There Are No Words:

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July 31st, 2016|Uncategorized|1 Comment

The Visual Field is a Container

Adams – The Visual Field is a Container
The Visual Field is a Container, 60 x 108 inches (triptych), acrylic & mixed media on panel, ©2016 Deidre Adams

I just finished another painting in my Metaphors & Mysteries series. These works will be part of an upcoming solo show at Point Gallery, Denver, opening Aug. 5. The series is based on concepts detailed in “Metaphors We Live By,” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. (See other works in the series here and here.)

The title for this painting comes from Chapter 12, “How Is Our Conceptual System Grounded?” – page 58:

… We experience ourselves as entities, separate from the rest of the world – as containers with an inside and an outside. We also experience things external to us as entities – often also as containers with insides and outsides. … We experience many things, through sight and touch, as having distinct boundaries, and, when things have no distinct boundaries, we often project boundaries upon them – conceptualizing them as entities and often as containers (for example, forests, clearings, clouds, etc.)

As in the case of orientational metaphors, basic ontological metaphors are grounded by virtue of systematic correlates within our experience. As we saw, for example, the metaphor THE VISUAL FIELD IS A CONTAINER is founded in the correlation between what we see and a bounded physical space.

If you become aware of the painting as an object, you can think of it as being rather like a window, which is a boundary within your visual field. In most but not all paintings, there is an implied continuation of the visual field which you can’t see but may imagine.

I started this painting in late 2015, so I finished it in less than a year – pretty fast for me! Here are some in-progress views:

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January 2016

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May 2016

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June 2016

 

And some detail shots of the finished painting.

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July 25th, 2016|Art, Exhibitions|Comments Off on The Visual Field is a Container

Colorado Women in Abstraction opening reception

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Last night was the opening reception for Colorado Women in Abstraction, an exhibition of  “the work of women artists who have been influential in the abstract movement in Colorado” at the Center for Visual Art in Denver, Colorado. I’m so honored and grateful to have been included in this exhibition, along with the work of many women whose work I admire greatly. My heartfelt thanks go to Guest Curator Michael Paglia, (art critic for Denver Westword newspaper, art ltd magazine, and author of books Colorado Abstract and Texas Abstract), Cecily Cullen, Managing Director and Curator of the Center For Visual Art in Denver, and the many other people who mounted the exhibit and did countless other things behind the scenes. Thanks also to friends & family who came out to support me.

It was so great to see old friends and meet new ones. Here are a few of the artists I was able to snag for portraits beside their work. Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to meet all of the wonderful artists. I also didn’t think to get a listing of all the artwork titles, but I hope to rectify that matter before too long.

Adams-IMG_2850-Jane Guthridge

Adams-IMG_2864-Sabin Aell 

Adams-IMG_2865- Skyler McGee

Adams-IMG_2866-Carlene Francis

Adams-IMG_2870-Deidre Adams

Adams-IMG_2896- Margaret Pettee Olsen

Adams-IMG_2898-Teresa Booth Brown

Adams-IMG_2900-Tonia Bonnell

Adams-IMG_2903-Amy Metier

Adams-IMG_2908-Wendi Harford

 

We had a huge turnout for the opening. It was a wonderful evening! A few more scenes from the opening:

Adams-IMG_2852-Cecily Cullen introducing Michael Paglia

Adams-IMG_2861-Hugh Grant, Founding Director and Curator for the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art

 

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July 16th, 2016|Art, Exhibitions|Comments Off on Colorado Women in Abstraction opening reception