YURA ADAMS, FROSTLINE
YURA ADAMS, FROSTLINE
Frostline, 2022, oil on paper. 12 x 9 inches (each)
YURA ADAMS
FROSTLINE
May 1 - July 30, 2022
In tandem with our solo booth of Yura Adams’ work at NADA New York 2022 (May 5-8), Olympia is proud to present, Frostline, an exclusively online presentation of recent works on paper by Yura Adams.
Bio:
Yura Adams is a painter and installation artist who uses translucent materials to interpret her personal research on weather, patterns of geology, and biological growth.
Most recently, her work was selected for the Drawing Center Viewing Program, and was exhibited at Olympia Gallery, New York City, the Albany Airport Gallery, Albany, New York, Woodstock Art Association and Museum, Kleinert/James Gallery in Woodstock, New York and Artspace, New Haven, Connecticut. She has received grants from Pollock-Krasner Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Berkshire Taconic Foundation, New York Decentralization, and was a regional representative for New York Foundation of the Arts, Mark program. She has taught painting in many schools including Rhode Island School of Design and has curated at Foundation Gallery, Columbia-Greene Community College in Hudson, New York and recently for the exhibition “Unraveling” at Opalka Gallery, Russell-Sage College, Albany. She currently lives and works in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
Yura’s notes:
I have a passion for thinking about what the earth is doing, how it is affecting weather and natural science around me. I focus on immediate experience in my work, this is a part of my practice equation. Frostline developed because I was experiencing a very cold winter this past January and February, so I made work about what the freezing temperature was creating around me. During that time, I perched in front of a space heater to stay warm and painted small works so I could remain in front of the heater. Frostline-brain evolved, and I interpreted my perceptions of real-time experiences I was having outside. I conveyed my body carefully across icy paths, tripped on earth heaves on the dirt road, skated on the blade edges across acres of natural ice rinks that formed in the fields around me, followed animal tracks, and absorbed the beauty of frosty mornings and sub-zero nights.
Crack, 2022, oil on paper. 12 x 9 inches, SOLD.
Edge, 2022, oil on paper. 12 x 9 inches
February Wind, 2022, oil on paper. 12 x 9 inches
Freezing Rain, 2022, oil on paper. 12 x 9 inches
With creative beings, the impetus, or the experiences, evolve around the core, or the subconscious which remains constant. When I was a performance artist, I improvised with a set of props that emerged from the same place as my paintings do, but the works played with the element of real time. My early performance work helped to develop the “fearless muscles” so necessary in my studio today.
Ice on the road, February 2022
I am a painter and installation artist whose work is based upon the abstraction I have developed as a visual language with ideas drawn from nature as a dominant source. The exploration of new materials and the accumulated confidence of a sustained practice lead me through work, and I use photography, sketches, notes, memories of perceptions, and the study of aspects of natural science to stimulate my process.
When I am making work, I have put myself to the task of finding my way in and out of a work of art with no road map.art of the process is an intellectual challenge but there is a more important connection to the unknown, the subconscious that is so vital and fascinating that I believe it is a defining human moment to be creative. My subconscious is prodded by the experiences of the body: what I read, listen to, conversations, study, moments in nature etc.
Frozen Night, 2022, oil on paper. 12 x 9 inches
Yura Adams in her studio, February 2022
Glide, 2022, oil on paper. 12 x 9 inches
Sap, 2022, oil on paper. 12 x 9 inches
Heave, 2022, oil on paper. 12 x 9 inches
Shatter, 2022, oil on paper. 12 x 9 inches
View from Studio, Feburary 2022.
Studio routine is best kept on a continuum, I like to keep it cooking, in fact my notebooks contain lists I frequently make at the start of a session under the heading “WIH” (what is hot). I might noodle around in Photoshop, trying out different solutions to a visual problem, but I always ignore what I have discovered there, that work is to break up patterns of thinking. I might read up on a concept, go through my stack of vital books, have a snack or take a nap to change gears. Music is a great partner; I use my playlists to kick it up.
The paintings filter and interpret what I gather, and I try to imagine a world drawn from the poetry I find in nature and science. Experiences with wind, weather, fast-moving clouds, bird observations and atmospheric shifts in color are a few subjects I have used. In my practice, I endeavor to map a mysterious interior life with the way I work with form.
Icy Glen, 2022, oil on paper. 12 x 9 inches
Frost Bush, 2022, oil on paper. 12 x 9 inches
Winterscape, 2022, oil on paper. 12 x 9 inches