ANE COULTHARD

Adams paints enor-

mous canvases that pulse with color and mo- tion,

By Christopher Brayshaw

meres

SPOTLIGHT FEATURE

Her subjects are commonplace ~ ceramic planters, sundecks, floral sull lites — which makes her artistic transformation of them all the more remarkable.

As Adams paints, sunflower petals burst into long tongues of yellow fire; the painted warriors on the side of a clay pot spring to life and charge off into space.

Adanis is reluctant to characterize her work as any par- ticular kind of painting.

In fact, the phrase that best

or

couver School or Art in 1965, Adams and tellow graduate Morris attended Landan’s Slade School ot Art which she desenbes as any “sorsa" alter Vancouver,

“The program consisted mainly ot lectures... (the other students! were art history majors Gn schob aoships tram the Stiles, There

WTC VGTY feay painters .iong us.”

Adams wanted to work doll tine asa professional painter, but atter she returned tram London, she designed kitchens and bathroonts tor two years while painting part- time,

She also met and married An- dreas Poulsson, a National Film Board director and cameraman, and moved with him to Montreal.

“Montreal was the huts of Ca- nadian film-making: it was my destiny to remain there for 20 years."

Adams’ more recent works are

&&@ By painting abstractions, you can

paint without the interference of

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describes it does not come from art history, but from literature: magical realism.

Adams, like Latin American writers Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Julio Cortazar, blends familiar images with imaginative flourishes of her own that cause viewers to look twice at the world around them.

Adams, 49, is the daughter of award-winning Canadian com- poser Jean Coulthard and the late Vancouver interior designer Don Adams.

After graduating from Crofton House School, Adams went overseas for a year to attend the Chelsea Schoo! of Art, then returned to Vancouver in 1962 to enrol in the Vancouver School of Art.

“My beginnings were very much part of the Vancouver ‘scene’ as it developed in the Six- ties,’ she says.

“My second day back, | walk-

_ed into a class — ! think it was Jack (Shadbolt’s) — where frene Whittome was painting six-foot- high bugs and insects. | had a complete revelation...

“Peter Aspell once brought a horse into class so his students could draw it from life. Roy Kiyooka would read us poetry — William Carlos Williams ... ‘So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow...’ and say, ‘Now paint what (ve just read you.”

During her three years at the Vancouver School of Art. Adams studied under Shadbolt, Kiyooka, Don Jarvis and Orville Fisher, and befriended fellow student Michael Morris, whose hard edge stylings were an important early influence.

After graduating from the Van-

Retraction

In our newspaper ad that ran Wednesday, July 7, 1993, the offer of 70% off Sheets should have read 70% otf Sheers.

Woodward's apologizes for any inconvenience this change may cause.

brilliantly colored evocations of flowers, gardens, and snippets of West Coast landscape.

She says, “I don‘t consider myself a landscape painter,’’ yet admits she draws freely from the West Coast's natural forms, especially those of Hernando

PLAYLAND ALL

Island, where she gous each summer to paint,

“Ry painting abstractions, you can paint without the intertc.ence of time.” savs Adams of her sunflower and garden images, “Nature is unending — you can pick ups moment and suspend it.”

She has just shown me a suite of paintings being readied tor her nest show: pictures of children set against darkening landscapes.

“The subject matter is derived trom my own family: my daughter, her inends, images borrawed trom the last few years together. | will most likely call the series Voices From a Family"

In the place of the heavily tex- tured surfaces of Adams’ other re- cent paintings, the new canvases incorporate found objects from places as lar apart as Ambleside and South Africa’s Cap L’Agulhas.

“| have woven real elements from the sea into these works,” says Adams. “I believe the sand and shells that are part of these memories are a good metaphor or vehicle to contemplate the passing of time,”

The new paintings are darker and more solemn than her other works; still, there are traces of magic throughout.

An abalone-colored bird perches atop one child’s head; another child holds a purple starfish that burns brightly as a star.

Since her return from Montreal, Adams has shown at the West Vancouver Memorial Library and the West Van Ferry Building, and has had two solo shows at John D. Ramsay Contemporary Art, which will host a show of her recent work early next year.

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2 NEWS photo Neil Lucante

JANE COULTHARD ADAMS’ most recent paintings are brilliantly colored evocations of flowers, gardens and snippets of West

Coast landscape.

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