Michael Adamson - statement

My artistic practice centers around my concern with material as vocabulary, and is focused exclusively on oil painting. As an abstract painter, I have become increasingly interested in the structural language of colour and texture and the dynamic tension set up between the manipulation of a substance to reveal its properties and the external pattern created.

In 1998 I began producing a series of works in which I mirrored the weft and weave of the canvas through the use of grids, building up a series of complex poly-rythms based on colour and texture, finding the pattern and order in the chaos of the materiality of the paint. Initially, I used form to structure my investigation of colour, creating colour harmonies, of increasing density, then I found that, conversely, colour could be used to structure texture and my exploration of the physical properties of my medium. In essence, I began developing a visual language complex systems of relations and the grids were becoming emblematic of my research.

In the tradition of artists such as Hans Hoffman, Asger Jorn, and Nicolas de Stael, whose work informs my own practice, my painting increasingly explores both gesture and materiality. I am interested in creating works which are at once apparently gestural extremely studied. This evolution, I feel, is based on growing confidence in my ability to manipulate complicated colour/texture harmonies gained through a disciplined approached over a long period of time.
Most recently, I have moved towards heightening the physiological and psychological presence of the surface of my paintings, by both integrating the use of cold wax to create surface ”interruptions” and by reducing the size of the grid. In this way, I hope to produce a kind of aesthetic shock, which is positive (rather than abject), and expresses the opulence of my chosen Medium.

Michael Adamson