Ron Adams
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Ron Adams
Biography
Born: Detroit, Michigan, 1934
Died: Los Angeles, California, 2020
The life of Ron Adams has from his youth been inexorably linked to the graphic arts. He studied drawing, technical illustration, and commercial art at a broad range of schools, primarily located in Los Angeles. At the age of 29 he began working at the esteemed graphic workshop, Gemini G.E.L.. Beginning his tenure as an assistant printer, Adams soon received the honor of Master Printer and the opportunity to work with many leading contemporary artists including Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Ellsworth Kelly. In 1973, he left Los Angeles for Editions Press in San Francisco before moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he opened Hand Graphics, another nationally recognized press. There he collaborated with such artists as Judy Chicago, Luis Jimenez, John Biggers, and Charels White. After thirteen years as owner and director of Hand Graphics, Adams sold the business in 1987 to return exclusively to producing his own art. His expressionistic and physically exaggerated figurative realism gives an almost mythical strength to the common people and narrative situations that he renders so elegantly.
Died: Los Angeles, California, 2020
The life of Ron Adams has from his youth been inexorably linked to the graphic arts. He studied drawing, technical illustration, and commercial art at a broad range of schools, primarily located in Los Angeles. At the age of 29 he began working at the esteemed graphic workshop, Gemini G.E.L.. Beginning his tenure as an assistant printer, Adams soon received the honor of Master Printer and the opportunity to work with many leading contemporary artists including Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Ellsworth Kelly. In 1973, he left Los Angeles for Editions Press in San Francisco before moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he opened Hand Graphics, another nationally recognized press. There he collaborated with such artists as Judy Chicago, Luis Jimenez, John Biggers, and Charels White. After thirteen years as owner and director of Hand Graphics, Adams sold the business in 1987 to return exclusively to producing his own art. His expressionistic and physically exaggerated figurative realism gives an almost mythical strength to the common people and narrative situations that he renders so elegantly.
Artist Statement
“At first glance his imagery calls to mind the work of Charles White, but it is Goya, Kollwitz, Durer, Le Bruhn, Francis de Erdley and the Mexican muralist with whom he identifies . . . The penchant for hard work is also expressed in the exaggerated musculature of Ron Adams figures, the taut neck and bound shoulders, knitted brows, and sinewy, powerful hands of both women and men. Though his figures are usually alone and have a look of serious preoccupation, mediating details-a filmy pair of stockins hung over an open drawer, the arching rose stem held in a crow’s beak, a hummingbird hovering at the edge of a morning glory-suggest an appreciation of balance.”
– Kay Lindsey –
“I enjoy attempting to create form and volume and quite often I take liberties in exaggerating my forms and gestures to express the mood or emotion I am trying to capture.”
– Ron Adams –