ABOUT ROBERT ADAMS

MY LIFE WITH ART

Pictures have always fascinated me. As a young child I spent countless hours looking at images in books and magazines. As I grew older I began drawing my own pictures. By my teenage years, classical art and art history had become an interest. Aside from the sheer pleasure it provided, it helped me develop an understanding of composition and a sense of aesthetics.

In my early twenties I specialized in drawing with a black and white pen and ink stipple technique. The images were comprised of small dots meticulously placed with a technical drawing pen. An eight by eight inch drawing of this type would often take forty hours or more to complete. It required patience and intense attention to detail.

After creating a portfolio of samples, I entered the Los Angeles freelance advertising illustration market, by cold calling art directors and asking for the opportunity to show my work. Realism was my chosen style. I freelanced for ad agencies such as Foote Cone & Belding and Doyle Dane Bernbach. My work was seen in Southern California and national publications including the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal.

In my illustration work, photography had become an important tool for reference material. I also began photographing, for my own pleasure; subjects like auto racing and blues musicians. As I began to study the history of photography in depth, I saw an article about the street photography of William Klein, I immediately knew that was something I wanted to do. Learning the basics of strategy and technique was an awkward process at first, but with practice and experience it became much easier and more and more of a passion.

I also began experimenting with abstract photography using ice, lighting and reflective surfaces. This style involves macro lens photographs of ice which has been formed in particular ways, and contoured to produce the desired effect. As far as I know, it is a completely unique art form, which I developed through trial and error over a period of ten years.

Regardless of the type of art, my belief is that good art should primarily make the viewer think or feel something. Life is about stories and so is art.