Shade, 40 x 40 inches, acrylic & mixed media on panel. ©2017 Deidre Adams, all rights reserved.

I’m super excited to announced that I’m now represented by Walker Fine Art in Denver. I will be showing in my first exhibition there beginning this Friday. Details:

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EXPERIMENTAL SURROUNDINGS

Featuring Heather Patterson, Melissa Borrell, Chris DeKnikker, Deidre Adams,
Kim Ferrer, and David Mazza

Sept. 8 – Nov. 4

Walker Fine Art
300 W. 11th Avenue, #A
Denver, Colorado

Opening reception: Sept. 8, 5-9 pm
First Friday reception: Nov. 3, 5-8 pm
on view through Nov. 4

Free from recognizable elements, abstraction allows the artist to explore and
create experimental surroundings. In this group exhibition, 6 artists examine
constructed environments within their abstract work. Through sculpture,
painting and installation, a collective dialogue emerges regarding the
constant overlap of form, line, movement and perception of time.

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Hope to see you there!

Shade, detail image

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:

Seeing is Knowing, 60 x 108 inches, acrylic & mixed media on panel, ©2016 Deidre Adams

This is the next painting in the series Metaphors & Mysteries. My titles come from recent readings in “Metaphors We Live By,” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (University of Chicago Press, 1980, with Afterword, 2003) . I’ll leave you with a quote from Chapter 30, Understanding (p. 231):

When people who are talking don’t share the same culture, knowledge, values, and assumptions, mutual understanding can be especially difficult. Such understanding is possible through the negotiation of meaning. To negotiate meaning with someone, you have to become aware of and respect both the differences in your backgrounds and when these differences are important. You need enough diversity of cultural and personal experience to be aware that divergent world views exist and what they might be like. You also need patience, a certain flexibility in world view, and a generous tolerance for mistakes, as well as a talent for finding the right metaphor to communicate the relevant parts of unshared experiences or to highlight the shared experiences while deemphasizing the others. Metaphorical imagination is a crucial skill in creating rapport and communicating the nature of unshared experience.

Lately I think a willingness to negotiate meaning is sorely lacking in our discourse. Exploring the reasons for this is beyond what I’m willing to go into here, but I will say that I myself am not immune to the urge to shut down my tolerance when confronted with ideas radically different from my own. I like to think that artwork has a function in the furthering of shared understanding, even if at a minimum merely providing some alternative ways of looking at the world.

Here are some detail views of Knowing is Seeing: