While operating between two extremes of abstraction, Adams also works as a musician. He was classically trained on the violin at an early age, but improvisation won out over formality and he now plays fiddle for the jazz group Nairobi Trio. He sees similarities between the disciplines of painting and music, both providing opportunities for improvising, and each offering the distance from the other. On a more practical level, they are necessarily daytime and nocturnal occupations respectively.

If abstract art can be fitted into two general categories, depending on whether its elements are derived from either natural or entirely non-representational forms, then that of Auckland painter Richard Adams hovers somewhere in between. While his earlier compositions were strongly suggestive of landscapes, his more recent paintings have no such easily identifiable origins. They are in fact pieces of evidence of physical change and deterioration, all drawn from overlooked corners of the natural world. These patinas and pastels of irrepressible processes are what Adams collects and elevates to canvas. In a sense this self-styled abstractionist may better qualify as a covert realist, and one whose dependence on representation is simply disguised by scale.

While operating between two extremes of abstraction, Adams also works as a musician. He was classically trained on the violin at an early age, but improvisation won out over formality and he now plays fiddle for the jazz group Nairobi Trio. He sees similarities between the disciplines of painting and music, both providing opportunities for improvising, and each offering the distance from the other. On a more practical level, they are necessarily daytime and nocturnal occupations respectively.

When dealing with pigment, Adams begins by photographing specific details. He documents effects of time and elements on surfaces, all evidence of reduction to rust and dust. He seeks out particular colours and textures, as commonly found on the sides of buildings and railway wagons. But starting points for paintings can be found just about anywhere, even by the roadside where black tar-seal meets the grey kerb. In addition to washed-out and weathered surfaces, Adams’ other recurring motif is his use of line. Initially inspired by New Zealand’s ubiquitous horizon, he sets about scratching something new from nature’s original. He begins with a pencil, dragging a tentative thin grey mark through a succession of paint layers. It can also define the edge between adjacent areas of paint, or strike off on its own and become engulfed by surrounding pigment.

Richard Adams was introduced to art galleries at an early age, and his own path to the easel included a five year apprenticeship as scene painter in the New Zealand film industry. This gave him a repertoire of tricks, and was an ideal training ground for experimenting with the possibilities of paint. He learned to mix and match, to scrape and smudge, all in the search for a certain effect. Nowadays it is not the illusion of aging or weathering that concerns him, but the detail within. And while he paints from nature—or at least a highly selective part of it—he is no slavish copyist. He improvises, perhaps exploiting the incompatibility of oils and acrylics. He encourages happy accidents, as when the two meet and spawn what he calls ‘surface confrontations’. With this interest in the minutiae of effects, Adams has no shortage of potential subjects. They are patiently degrading on walls and surfaces everywhere, awaiting discovery. Having made his selection, he works quickly on enlargement and enhancement. He aims to make the finished painting appear effortless—attributing to Dick Frizzell a comment that they should look like they’ve just ‘floated in through the window and hit the wall’. Such apparent ease can belie the process, for in some cases Adams’ paintings are reworked over extensive periods of time. 

At his recent solo exhibition—his eighteenth to date—Adams presented the outcomes of his process on paper and canvas. The two major paintings on show were the paired Mercury and Tempest, both essays in grey. Arguably, the former claimed the only illusionistic device in the exhibition, a massive column-like form whose three-dimensionality was accentuated by an adjacent area of black. This painting also featured a blue diagonal, another rare intrusion in a field where movement is mostly horizontal or vertical. The complementary Tempest had a grey shape suggestive of landscape, balanced against turbulent cloud forms and similarly charged areas of white. And while Adams’ titles intentionally give little away, this one strongly suggested an insight into the weather workshop.

Adams’ aim is not virtuosity, either as a painter or musician. He steers clear of being ‘note perfect’, encouraging the intervention of slip-ups to add character and contrast. The point of the process is to achieve a sense of balance, to offer calm amidst a sea of textured surfaces. And while some horizontal elements are clearly suggestive of sea and sky, there are few such obvious references. His titles are intentionally ‘fairly poetic’ and open-ended to encourage various interpretations. Nevertheless, Monsoon also has meteorological overtones, its large and threatening black form tethered by borders of grey and white. Soar also suggests sky effects, its muted blue rectangles contrasted with another of Adams’ favourite devices, an area of rusted orange.

Titles also have implications of shift and adjustment, underscoring Adams’ search for equilibrium. Outcome and Navigation imply shuffling towards resolution, while Gravitate is dominated by a large looming patch of orange. In Position II, another central orange hot spot—reminiscent perhaps of Monet’s 1872 Impression: Sunrise—is balanced by a landscape-like grey band at the bottom of the canvas. All elements are carefully positioned, being vital parts of the overall composition. But if they have achieved some temporary stability, there is an obvious exception in the form of Bring to Light. Here an area of turbulence threatens to materialise into something disturbing and recognisable, emerging from a background of indistinguishable black and grey. Even if just an unintentional byproduct of robust paint application, it does give this painting an uncharacteristic sense of movement and unease. 

Whilst a scene painter Adams was reliant on strong colours, but his palette has since been toned down and has no pure pigments. As in jazz, it’s a case of using fewer notes to achieve the same effect, and intensifying by contrast with darker passages. And when it comes to application, Adams exhibits no signature brushstroke. Each part of the painting is a self-contained area of activity, where pigment has been applied and modified. No surface escapes his brush—his whites, for example, can appear clotted, chalky or creamy—and have several layers beneath. These accumulations occur over time, as paint is dragged, stroked and scumbled, as well as being veiled by other colours, and chipped to expose earlier deposits.    

Last year Adams was able to view paintings by Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993) for the first time, at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Not surprisingly he detected a common chord in the strong horizontals and verticals and use of colour, particularly in the American’s Ocean Park series. Any such comparison may, of course, be inappropriate, merely demonstrating that different intentions can have apparently similar outcomes. Diebenkorn’s compositions are in strong contrast to those by Adams, being spatial and chromatic explorations and more related to colour field painting. For Adams, painting is ‘all about observation’ and, while this comment may refer primarily to his initial identification of source material, it also suggests that his motivation is less the emotive potential of pigment than a balance of modified surfaces. His paintings have a muted serenity, but their carefully constructed formality can play second fiddle to his range of treatments. Adams’ challenge is to go beyond making arrangements that risk being merely pleasantly decorative. As a painter—and perhaps also as a musician—his is a balancing act, requiring control of internal textures and heavier forms so as not to undermine his intended floating effect.   

While serendipitous outcomes lean heavily on trickery, the most difficult trick of all is not using too many at once. Adams acknowledges also that he is working in an area made all the more challenging by its lack of boundaries and natural parameters. In his recent exhibition he demonstrated a selection of the infinite arrangements of forms and lines at his disposal. The placement of such elements can seem extremely arbitrary and, as with playing jazz fiddle, there may be no set path to follow. It’s largely a matter of knowing where to start—and where to stop.