Michael Adamson

  Adamson's artistic practice centers around his concern with material as vocabulary, and is focused exclusively on oil painting. As an abstract painter, he has become increasingly interested in the structural language of colour and texture and the dynamic tension set up between the manipulation of a substance to reveal its properties and the external pattern created.

  In the tradition of artists such as Hans Hoffman, Asger Jorn, and Nicolas de Stael, whose work informs his own practice; his painting increasingly explores both gesture and materiality. Adamson is interested in creating works which are at once apparently gestural extremely studied. This evolution is based on growing confidence in his ability to manipulate complicated colour/texture harmonies gained through a disciplined approached over a long period of time.

  Most recently, Adamson has moved towards heightening the physiological and psychological presence of the surface of my paintings, by both integrating the use of cold wax to create surface "interruptions" and by reducing the size of the grid. In this way, he hopes to produce a kind of aesthetic shock, which is positive (rather than abject), and expresses the opulence of his chosen medium.