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Adam Easton (b.1989) is an American figurative artist who creates delicate still lives that are presented in such a way as to be perceived as portraits drawn from autobiographical narratives and intimate everyday moments. Offering a contemporary rendering of Old Masters' compositions, the works for the Platform exhibition exemplify the artist’s refined brushwork and painterly approach. Drenched in vinaceous tones the paintings assume an elegant yet unnerving quality, further intensified by the depiction of glass masks, suggestive of darker themes within the works.
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Though this series of works presents inanimate objects, they all appear somehow anthropomorphic; depicted with a sense of monumentality they appear provocatively mysterious. In a disruption of the still life genre, Easton shakes many of our preconceptions, debasing the iconography of portraiture and landscape alike by creating dreamscapes which subvert our usual associations of the depicted objects. Easton himself observes that the subjects that he chooses to portray “present a kind of visual paradox, while the compositions are rich in metaphors that describe aspects of life". The way in which Easton combines the seemingly unmergeable recalls the practice of Victor Man, whose oeuvre is similarly characterised by the displacement of elements into new narratives, reconstructing the viewer’s sense of reality. Easton continues, “The painter's palette as a lily pad is a wholly new kind of palette, it carries a different feeling and raises unique questions. I am focused on finding a heightened point of tension where those feelings and questions are brought to the surface.”
Colour is paramount in Easton’s practice, assuming a key role in the way that the paintings are interpreted. The artist skillfully uses colour to harmonise the subject’s features, building up veils of paint to cloak them in sombre sunset hues. Growing the compositions out of a single colour, Easton captures moods, allowing room for ambiguity as the viewers unlock memories they didn’t know they had. "Red has so much energy to it that even if the palette and contrast in the image is very limited, it retains an intense buzzing quality that sustains a tension with a muted value range. This is consistent with my overall approach of always seeking out layers of incongruities on which to construct a work”, the artist continues. Though Easton manipulates light, form, and colour in an almost Impressionistic way, he still infuses the works with his own particular artistic style and fluxes of emotion, invoking a form of poetry. -
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
Adam Easton (b.1989) is an American artist who received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Minnesota in 2019. He has recently exhibited with PAPA Projects in an exhibition titled A Quiet Night, in St. Paul, MN (2022). Additionally, in 2019 his work was part of the exhibitions Wine Time with The Guest Room in Hudson Valley (NY) and Lobster Dinner with Trestle Gallery in Brooklyn (NY). Adam's work was published in the 2020 Art Maze Mag Anniversary Edition, Issue 20. He currently lives and works in New Haven, CT.
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Chosen Charity: Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK)
Since 1987, DESK has been serving people experiencing homelessness or living in poverty by providing food assistance and services that promote health, community, and equity.
“It is highly appropriate for the artist to have chosen DESK, an organisation with which Adam is intimately familiar, as the beneficiary considering the unnerving crisis of homelessness, addiction, trauma, neglect, and extreme poverty. We hope that viewers appreciate how Adam's work is complemented by the need to address the suffering of those in our communities and DESK's call to action.”
- Steve Werlin, Executive Director
