Skye-based James Newton Adams’ paintings in his solo exhibition at the Union Gallery are mostly of people and places in the Hebrides or west coast of Scotland.
They are rendered in a style which looks, at first glance, rough, childish and unconsidered. A second look, though, soon reveals some very subtle brushwork and a more complicated approach: a process of paring down, refining each scene until what remains is a kind of irreducible narrative essence.
What emerges could be about a longed-for meeting on the beach, the concealed loneliness of an individual or the contested, shifting spaces we share with others. At their best, Adams’ works simultaneously map geography, action, economy, appearance, climate and the unseen threads of spirit and community which link them.
All this, in wonderfully thick, textured, gneiss blues and Atlantic greys, rust reds and lifejacket orange. Here too are the nicotine browns of bars, sombre Presbyterian greens, and the energising white of sea spume, cloud and marauding gulls.
Adams’ is not a sentimental view of this society at the edge. He doesn’t flinch from showing its capacity for introversion, mistrust, booze-steeped melancholia and violence. Its cold and often awkward struggle against the wind is everywhere.
But what also emerges is the area’s anti-picture-postcard charm. 'Moonlighting', for example, refers to the nocturnal work of fishermen, whilst also nodding to the variety of jobs required to keep the wolf at bay. It alludes too to the questionable rigour with which such paid activities are sometimes documented for the authorities; the glamorous freedom of the periphery.
Adams has a knowing eye, conveys an impression of immediacy, the here and now, real people in real settings. And he does so with tolerant affection and often dark humour. This reviewer enjoyed, for example, how the erotic promise of the title ‘Morning Breath’ was subverted after closer inspection of the new arrivals on the bed.
Amusing also was the cheerful pleasure steamer in ‘Waverley Sunset’, with people waving towards it from the shore.
I spoke earlier of Adams’ refinement, and nowhere is this clearer than in the steel sculptures which form a second thread to the exhibition.
These have an extraordinary, hard-earned purity to them, evoking shapes and states of mind in their most beautifully elemental forms. I loved ‘Barrow Boy’ ...
But for me, the best of them, and the highlight of the show, was ‘Leaving St Kilda’ – an evocation of loss delivered with riveting, laconic honesty. It has the simplicity of rock art. It speaks volumes. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. AM
Pictured, top to bottom:
‘Meeting on a Beach’, acrylic on canvas
‘White Creeler’, acrylic on board
‘Target Practice’, acrylic on canvas
‘Moonlighting’, acrylic on canvas
'Morning Breath', acrylic on card
‘Waverly Sunset’, acrylic on board
‘Barrow Boy’, mild steel
‘Mary in her Nightie’, mild steel
‘Leaving St Kilda’, mild steel