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Artist Index Peter Seitz Adams (born August 27, 1950) is one of California’s most recognized landscape and figurative painters and an important figure in contemporary Southern California art. He is the longest serving President of the California Art Club (f. 1909) [1] and a member of the Board of Directors of the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena. Adams has been a professional artist since the late 1970s and, as a world traveler, he has been described as working in the tradition of 19th Century British Adventurer-Artists. He has painted extensively abroad, hiking and painting his way across Asia on two expeditions in the 1980s, where he visited China, India, Pakistan, Tibet and Bhutan.[2] Disguised as a Mujahideen, in 1987 he painted in Afghanistan during Russia’s long involvement there and then lectured on his experiences when he went back to the United States.[3] Adams is also a talented writer and editor who has written extensively for the California Art Club newsletter as well as a number of the organizations exhibition catalogs.[4] His high-keyed works, which includes Plein-Air landscapes, still lifes and imaginative figurative paintings have been exhibited in a long series of solo and group exhibitions in private galleries and museums in California and the Western United States.[5] Family and Personal Background Peter Adams comes from a socially prominent family. His mother, Mary Seitz Adams (1917–2004), was a socially active homemaker and his father, Peter Adams Sr., was a businessman by vocation, but an actor by avocation. Peter Adams Senior appeared in Hollywood epics such as "The Robe" and the "Big Fisherman," Jailhouse Rock and the television series Zorro; thus, Hollywood figures like Claudette Colbert were family friends. His maternal grandfather was the playwright and Hollywood director George B. Seitz (1888–1944).[6] Adams has two older sisters, Mary Adams O’Connell, who is a prominent businesswoman and Aileen Adams Cowan, who is a former Secretary of State for Consumer Affairs for the State of California and an Assistant Attorney General in the Clinton Administration.[7] Adams grew up in Beverly Hills and attended Harvard School. Peter Adams is married to Elaine Shelby Adams, a former stockbroker who has managed the California Art Club as well as Adams' career since 1993.[8] They have no children. Peter and Elaine Adams live on a leafy street in Pasadena in a large comfortable home that has been described as an eclectic mixture of Chinese furniture and Antiques, some significant works by his teacher Theodore Lukits as well as a broad selection of some of his own works chosen by his wife.[9] The Adams have constructed elaborate waterfalls and pools, as well as walls and walkways made of river stones around their Pasadena property. Peter Adams' atelier features a high pitched roof that allows him to work on large paintings and glassed shelves filled with his vast collection of art books. He is an avid outdoors-man who hikes or mountain bikes in the San Gabriel Mountains with his border collies and enjoys backpacking and painting trips in the Sierras. Adams is known for his eccentric behavior and he enjoys costume parties so much that he keeps closets full of costumes in his home and once dressed as the Ming Emperor for a CAC opening in Chinatown. He is considered a gifted public speaker and raconteur who is said to have a story for every occasion.[10] Early Art Studies From the earliest stages of his artistic life, Adams was drawn to traditional, representational art. As a young man he collected adventure books from the “Golden Age” of American Illustration”. He credits these romantic tales, illustrated by artists like Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth and Dean Cornwell with not only inspiring his art, but interesting him in the world beyond the shores of America.[11] Adams wanted to learn how to paint like the turn-of-the-century painters did, but his initial studies at the Instituto de Bellas Artes in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico (1969), Otis Art Institute and Art Center School (1970) were less than fulfilling. In the late 1960s, encouragement and instruction for the traditional painter was difficult to find. Then, in 1970 he was introduced to Theodore Lukits (1897–1992) a well-known portrait, still life and landscape painter who had been teaching in Los Angeles since 1924.[12] Studies With Theodore Lukits Peter Adams entered the atelier of Theodore Lukits in 1970. Adams has described walking into Lukits studio, which was lined with plaster casts of Roman and Greek sculpture, student’s drawings and Chinese antiques "like walking into another century” because the Lukits Atelier resembled those of the 19th century Parisian painters' he admired.[13] Lukits had been a child prodigy and he began his own studies before he was twelve at the Washington University School of Fine Arts, then the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and finally at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he captured all the major awards. Lukits method of instruction was based on the Parisian ateliers of the late 19th century when hundreds of Americans studied in Paris. Lukits had studied with a host of Parisian- and European-trained painters including Alphonse Mucha(1860–1939), Edmund Henry Wuerpel (1866–1947), Edwin Blashfield (1848–1936), Karl Albert Buehr (1866–1952), Wellington J. Reynolds (1865–1949), Richard E. Miller (1875–1943), Charles Webster Hawthorne (1872–1930) and Robert Henri (1865–1929).[14] This type of instruction is now known as the "Atelier Method." [15] The Beaux-Arts method had evolved over hundreds of years from the Renaissance through the 19th century and was brought to perhaps its highest level of refinement by Parisian masters like William-Adolphe Bouguereau(1825–1905), Jean-Leon Gerome (1824–1904) and Leon Bonnat (1833–1922). Adams was to study with Lukits for seven years and eventually he became his apprentice, but like all of Lukits new students, he began by "drawing from the antique" which meant doing charcoal or graphite portraits of marbles and plaster casts of ancient Roman and Greek statuary. These studies taught Adams and the other students to understand "values" which are the tonal gradations of light and shadow, applicable to working under artificial lighting conditions in the studio or out of doors under the natural light of the sun or moon. Advancement in a traditional atelier is based on mastery rather than an artificial quarter or semester system, so Adams moved from working from plaster casts to simple still life set-ups only after his instructor was satisfied with his work.[16] As a culmination of his graphite work Adams did a series of fanciful still life drawings of Asian antiques that set the direction for the still life works of his professional career. Eventually he began to work in color, painting still life set-ups under the colored lights that Lukits used to simulate conditions an artist would find out of doors. As the months passed under Lukits' guidance, he attended Lukits' anatomy and life drawing classes. Like the Parisian-trained painters of the last century, during the summers, Adams also began to paint “En plein-air” as the practice of painting out of doors, directly from the landscape is known. He began going out painting with Arny Karl (1940–2000) an older Lukits student who had been painting out of doors for a number of years. Using the pastel medium, the two went on Plein-Air trips to the local foothills, the Southland beaches, including trips to St. Malo, near Oceanside, where the Adams family had a beach house and into the San Gabriel Mountains. Karl and Adams also made much longer trips to the American and Canadian National Parks, going as far north as the Canadian Rockies. By the mid-1970s, they were painting with an even younger Lukits student, Tim Solliday (b. 1952).[17] Together, the three artists began to revive the practice of painting en Plein-Air with pastels, as their teacher Lukits had done in the 1920s and 1930s. Professional career Adams began painting professionally about 1980. He was first represented by The Greg Juarez Gallery in Beverly Hills. Run by the collector, philanthropist and 9th generation Californian Greg Juarez (b. 1925), the Juarez Gallery represented Adams for a number of years. Next, he moved to the Adamson-Duvannes Gallery in West Hollywood, California. Jerome Adamson was an art collector who had purchased the historic Armand-Duvannes Gallery. He represented Adams for a number of years and mounted Adams’ large exhibitions of works from Asia and Afghanistan.[18] In 1992, he began to exhibit his work with the Morseburg Galleries in West Hollywood, where he worked with Jeffrey Morseburg, his friend and a fellow student of Theodore Lukits. At Morseburg Galleries, Adams participated in a long series of group exhibitions which included the older painter Richard Rackus (b. 1922), as well as two of his friends from the Lukits Atelier, Arny Karl (1940–2000) and Tim Solliday (b. 1952). These exhibitions emphasized the revival of Plein-Air landscape painting and helped to add steam to a growing movement. Morseburg also had an enthusiasm for the pastel medium and Adams participated in a number of pastel shows along with Solliday, Karl, Gil Dellinger , Rich Hilker and Clark Mitchell.[19] Adams also began showing his work with Waterhouse Gallery in Santa Barbara. In 2005, his wife, Elaine Adams opened American Legacy Fine Arts, a small, well-appointed gallery below Adams’ studio in Pasadena and she took over promoting her husband’s work in Los Angeles.[20] Artistic Influences Adams is quick to credit a wide variety of historic painters as influencing his works. While he has been inspired by the classical tradition, it is a tradition that he sees as broad and deep and seldom limiting. First and foremost he cites Theodore Lukits, his teacher and mentor whose received knowledge are a direct link back to the studios of Paris and the French Masters that he admires, including William Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) and Jean-Leon Gerome (1824–1904). Like most Plein-Air painters he also cites the Spanish Impressionist Joaquin Sorolla (1863–1923) and the Swedish painter of figures in outdoor settings Anders Zorn (1860–1920) as having an impact on his work. However, in contrast to many painters steeped in the Plein-Air tradition, the course of Adams' life and career has been influenced by the Orientalists, the French, British and American painters who ventured to the Middle East in the 19th century, painting the "exotic" people who populated lands that were unfamiliar to them. He includes John Frederick Lewis (1804–1876) Sir David Roberts (Artist) (1796–1864), Frederick Arthur Bridgman (1847-19280 and Edwin Lord Weeks (1849–1903) as painters who made him curious to explore remote lands and get to known distant peoples. Adams designs and constructs his paintings differently from most painters and he has been influenced in completely different ways by the English painter, illustrator, print-maker and muralist Sir Frank Brangwyn (1857–1956) and the Art Nouveau painter and muralist Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939). From Mucha he learned about swirling, moving, compositions and curvilinear line. From Brangwyn he learned about the juxtaposition of interesting shapes. Assessment and Oeuvre While Adams considers himself a traditionalist and a representational painter, he is considered to be an innovative colorist and because of his interest in unusual effects of light, natural wonders and underground geological formations, his work can be out of the mainstream of traditional art.[21] Early in his career, his work consisted of Plein-Air pastels and oils of the Eucalyptus trees, bridges and foothills around Pasadena, but he also did a series of beach scenes with figures centered on St. Malo Beach near Oceanside.[22] The works that he did on his extended trips to Asia were primarily figurative and he worked in quick drying tempera to sketch and then completed a series of large works for his exhibitions back in America. Most of his early paintings were in the green and tan tones of the late California Spring and Summer. As his career advanced, his palette deepened and both his Plein-Air pastels and the larger oils that he worked on in the studio became bolder and more confident. The art historian, former Chief Curator of the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, described Adams' pastel work in an essay for the exhibition Contemporary Romanticism: Landscapes in Pastel as being "Inspired by the brilliant colors, atmospheric perspective, and scenic grandeur of the great 19th century Romanticists, Peter Adams, a student of Theodore Lukits in the 1970s, conveys the magical shimmer of light in ephemeral sunsets and the tranquility of the sea." [23] Like his teacher Lukits did in the 1920s, Adams painted in the Sierras both in the summer and during the winter months when the conditions and the resulting works were more dramatic. By the mid-1990s, while its origins remained out of doors, his work was becoming more stylized, showing the unmistakable influence of Art Nouveau. As he reached middle age, Adams began to do large works of unusual natural formations, geysers and pools in Yellowstone National Park or stalactites in Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.[24] In recent years he had returned to the human figure as a subject, often combining fantasy and reality in his works, as he has done in a series of recent works centered on the story of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung and the Los Angeles Ring Festival mounted by the Los Angeles Opera.[25] Revival of the California Art Club By the early 1990s, Adams and his friends who were also traditional painters saw the need for an organization that could help to bring order to the reemerging traditional art movement in California. He and his wife Elaine, along with their friend and dealer Jeffrey Morseburg, had been discussing the need for some sort of umbrella organization that could mount exhibitions and promote Plein-Air and figurative painting for a number of years. In 1993, when Verna Guenther, who was a member of the historic California Art Club, came to Morseburg to see if he knew anyone younger who was capable of taking over the venerable organization that then consisted of an aging cohort of painters, Morseburg, seeing an opportunity, recommended Peter and Elaine Adams because he saw the value in taking over an existing organization to promote traditional fine arts.[26] After some thoughts about the effects that such a task could have on his career, Peter Adams accepted the Presidency of the California Art and he has remained at its helm to the present. In order to reorganize the California Art Club, Adams began to recruit most of the active professional landscape and figurative painters that he knew. The core group of artists that became members of the reorganized California Art Club were primarily students of Theodore Lukits or the Russian landscape and figurative painter Sergei Bongart (1918–1985). In his first meeting, in the Adams' Pasadena home, he signed up Tim Solliday, Steve Houston, Bill Stout and Steve Mirich. Among the first wave of painters to join the reorganized CAC were Bongart students Dan Pinkham, Sunny Apinchapong Yang, the elderly artist Richard Rackus and the Russian painters Alexander Orlov and Alexey Steele. Organization of California Art Club Special Exhibitions Under the leadership of Peter and Elaine Adams, the California Art Club began to organize a series of thematic exhibitions at both art and natural history museums. The Adams saw that there was a natural relationship between landscape art and ecological awareness and natural history.[27] In 1996, the California Art Club organized the California Wetlands Exhibition at the Natural History Museum in historic Exposition Park in Los Angeles. This exhibition included works by artists such as Bill Stout, Marcia Burtt, Meredith Brooks Abbott, Debra Hulse, Arny Karl and Peter Adams. In May through August 1998, the California Art Club mounted Treasures of the Sierra Nevada at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, featuring works by historic California artists like Edgar Alwin Payne (1883–1947), Jack Wilkinson Smith, and Theodore Lukits as well as contemporary painters like Adams, John Budicin, Dan Pinkham and Karl Dempwolf.[28] The Carnegie Museum in Oxnard, California hosted a large exhibition of works by painters from the California Art Club in 1994 titled The California Art Club: 85 Years of Art where Adams' work was featured prominently.[29] In 1997, Peter and Elaine Adams and the California Art Club organized a traveling exhibition which contrasted the work of American Impressionists and Classical Realist painters from the East and Midwestern United States with the California Impressionists. Titled East Coast Ideals, West Coast Concepts, the exhibition traveled from the Carnegie Museum in Oxnard, to the Springville Museum of Art in Springville, Utah to the Academy of Art College in San Francisco. Among the historic artists represented were William McGregor Paxton and R.H.Ives Gammell (1893–1981), representing the Boston School and Theodore Lukits and Maurice Braun (1877–1941) representing the California Impressionists. Contemporary artists included the works of Richard Lack, Allen Banks, Stephen Gjertson from the East and Midwest and Peter Adams, Gregory Hull and Tim Solliday representing the West.[30] In 1999, the California Art began a long relationship with the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu with the exhibition titled On Location in Malibu, which was another show that brought awareness to the troubled California Coast. The exhibition, organized by Peter and Elaine Adams and curated by the Weisman's Michael Zakian, ran from May 22 to August 7, featuring the work of Adams along with dozens of CAC painters including David Gallup, Stephen Mirich and Alexey Steele.[31] Public Group Exhibitions * 2010 - 99th Annual California Art Club Gold Medal Exhibition, Pasadena Museum of California Art Solo Exhibitions * 2003: Skidmore Contemporary Art – Peter Adams: Pastels of Malibu; Malibu, California Memberships and Affiliations * California Art Club, President, 1993-President Awards and honors * 2010 - Gold Medal, California Art Club Gold Medal Exhibition, Pasadena Museum of California Art Public collections * ARCO Towers, Los Angeles, California References 1. ^ See California Art Club.Org CAC Presidents page. Further reading * Bellah, Suzanne, Adams, Peter & Solliday, Tim, The Pastels of Theodore Lukits, Exhibition Catalog, Carnegie Museum, Oxnard, California, 1991 (Articles on Lukits and his teaching by Bellah from the Carnegie as well as Adams and fellow student Tim Solliday) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/ ", Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License Artist Index ==--==--==
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