Pat Adams (American, b. 1928) implements an abstract vocabulary of hard and soft line, vibrant color and shapes, and textured surfaces to explore complex metaphysical ideas in her paintings. She works with a core of geometric forms--circles, curves, lines, squares, and various spherical variations--fixed within undefined fields of color. These repeated geometric elements, or “ur forms” as she calls them, are part of a specific and deliberate poetic language revealed in her titles, writings, and talks, which describes the qualities she strives to achieve in her work: “quidity or whatness, richesse, towardness, involuntary affect, slowing, apparency, delayed closure, autogenous bursts,” etc. The material vibrancy of these poetic works are increased by Adams’ experimentations with surface, often mixing sand, beads, shell, or mica into pigments to produce texture, movement, and shimmer.
While Adams’ paintings often have an immediate impact on the viewer, their greatest strength lies in their power to draw focus and keep viewers visually, mentally, and emotionally engaged over long periods of looking, thinking, and feeling. Her work asks the viewer to give their exclusive attention, and observe what happens when a wire-thin line journeys into an undefined field, or when a jolt of color moves in a parabolic trajectory across the canvas.
Originally from California, Adams moved to New York City to attend the Brooklyn Museum Art School in 1950. Working in New York throughout the lifespan of a multitude of movements in modern art, she remained keenly focused on the intellectual and artistic pursuit of her own unique visual vocabulary, which included teaching art throughout her career.
