Norman Adams; Painter
Hyfler/Rosner
(Filed: 14/03/2005) Telegraph
His paintings:
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=435&searchid=7334
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/?lid=184
http://www.harlow.gov.uk/arts/artinharlow/councilcollection/images/adams.jpg
http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/tourist/churches/s/63/63205_st_marys_roman_catholic_church.html
Norman Adams, who died on Thursday aged 78, was one of the
liveliest forces in British painting both as an artist and
as a teacher.
A remarkable colourist, Adams saw himself self-consciously
in the English romantic visionary tradition of William Blake
and Samuel Palmer, though he interpreted the tradition
according to a more uninhibited expressionist - or even
abstract - aesthetic, and in later years his colours
developed a warm and Mediterranean feel. As adept in oils as
he was in watercolour, he was also a renowned mural painter,
and large-scale commissions played an important part in his
work.
Adams always worked from nature; but he moved towards a
mysticism which expressed itself in allegory and employed a
more abstract iconography. He sometimes described himself
not as a painter but as a composer, and his paintings often
contained musical references.
He often took bible stories as a starting point for his
images or as themes to be explored pictorially, frequently
in series. The Stations of the Cross was a favourite; other
series explored themes, such as Creation, The Kiss of Judas
or Vision on the Road to Damascus. He gave his religious
subjects a contemporary pertinence by allying them with
recent events.
Adams first came to Christianity through painting, although
he never became a communicant in any particular
denomination. Early in his career he watched a
black-and-white film which told the life of Christ through
Giotto's paintings in the Arena Chapel, Padua. The pictures
moved him deeply and inspired his adoption of biblical and
apocalyptic themes.
Norman Edward Albert Adams was born in London on February 9
1927. He trained at the Harrow School of Art and
subsequently at the Royal College of Art, where he was
awarded the Bronze Medal for Painting.
His first solo exhibition was held in 1952 at Gimpel Fils
London, and biennial one-man shows were subsequently held
from 1953 at Roland, Browse and Delbanco; 1953 also marked
the year in which he designed the stage set and costumes for
A Mirror of Witches produced by the Royal Ballet at Covent
Garden.
Adam's first major commission was a mural for Broad Lane
Comprehensive School, Coventry, in 1954. In 1967 he was
asked by Oxford University Press to illustrate parts of the
Old Testament, and he went on to paint murals for St
Anselm's Church, Kennington, in 1971, and to make 14 ceramic
panels of the Stations of the Cross for the Roman Catholic
Church at Coffee Hall in Milton Keynes in 1975. More
recently, in 1994, Adams created the Fourteen Stations of
the Cross, this time in oils, for St Mary's Church, Mulberry
Street, Manchester.
Adams was also a respected teacher. He was head of painting
at Manchester College of Art from 1962 to 1970, visiting
tutor at Leeds University from 1973 to 1976 and Professor of
Painting at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne from 1981
to 1986.
An amiable, shuffling figure, Norman Adams was elected Royal
Academician in 1972 and an honorary member of the Royal
Watercolour Society in 1987. He was elected Keeper of the
Royal Academy Schools in 1986, becoming responsible for the
Academy's 60 art students, and used the platform to promote
an optimistic prospectus for British art, arguing that the
English reputation for lack of visual awareness was
undeserved.
A retrospective of Adams's work was held in the Diploma
Galleries at the Royal Academy in 1988, and there was a 75th
birthday exhibition of his work at the Royal Academy in
2002. Examples of his work may be found in many public
collections, including the Tate.
He is survived by his wife, Anna, and by their two sons.