John Adams

John Adams arrived on scene in November 1929, about the time of the market Crash and the Great Depression. First memories are those of Horatio Street in Greenwich Village, New York City where a blacksmith shoed horses at one end and the Communist Party dis business at the other while just beyond lay abandoned piers and the Hudson River. Rich Art colors stacked to a shop's ceiling, visits to a Village artist's studio, and exposure to a mother's fashion illustrations filled out New York's visual excitement.

Much later, in the Seventh Grade in Connecticut, a manual arts teacher abandoned the syllabus to demonstrate his passion for watercolor painting with a stretch of 300# hand-laid watercolor paper, a sash brush, and color which he applied wet on wet. I was sold. That impromptu lesson, together with instruction in a life drawing class in late middle age constituted my formal education in art.

In due course came two years of study at Trinity College, Hartford with courses in art history, musical structure, and other eye-openers which led to unrequited wonder.

Five years of the professional study of Architecture at North Carolina States School of Design followed the time at Trinity, and these years included not only the tech...

Public Schools starting with a two-room school in Vermont as well as the follow-ups in New York and Connecticut.

Four years at the private Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts.

The previously mentioned study at Trinity College, Hartford and the five-year degree program in architecture at the School of Design at North Carolina State

"Twenty-Four Images" a well-received one-man show of a series of watercolors in and of Key West, Florida. Two or three of these are included in this SAATCHI offering.

For my purposes of artistic expression, I have found architecture to be limited, and so, over the years, I have resorted to drawing and painting to respond to my surroundings, and there has been feedback tp the architectural work.

I have never worked for a market, never consciously pursued a style or brand, never adopted the precepts of anybody's school of expression or followed a master. I have adopted whatever medium that seemed to do the job, and meet practical needs.

The "job", is to my mind a design problem that requires a solution often with surprising study and rehearsals. I hope the final image may be of interest on account of its graphic design, but more than that, I hope it may provoke thought and feelings. The viewer needs to participate, as in music to sing along or conduct.

With age, I become more and more fascinated with Mies Van Der Rohe's dictum, " Less is More"