PressDeparture - Washington Post Review - Blasts from the Past - June 26, 2015
50 Egg Tempera Paintings - Washington Post Review - August 22, 2014
My Little Bird.com Review - August 3, 2014 Time of Day - Washington Post Review by Mark Jenkins - Painting's Still in Vogue, and Everywhere in Washington - February 10, 2012 and Whirlwind Tour of the District's Many Painting Exhibitions - February 9, 2012 From the Washington Post The Reliable Source - April 16, 2015
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Caroline Adams - Departure Clouds are Caroline Adams’s principal concern as well, yet some of the most striking paintings in her “Departure” at Susan Calloway Fine Arts emphasize the textures of earth. The show includes a set of five pictures, grouped tightly together, that are all blue backdrop and billows of white and gray. Another cohesive series is painted with egg tempera and oil on small wooden panels; these emphasize land over sky and deploy the panels’ grain to evoke the roughness of rock and soil. They also highlight the looseness of the artist’s brushwork, though spontaneous gestures and welcomed imperfections also are visible in large oils such as “Next Year.” Adams, a well-traveled D.C. artist who’s about to move to Germany, frequently titles her work with references to time. But paintings dubbed “Bright Tomorrow” or “Yesterday’s Afternoon” don’t reveal an actual chronology. “Yesterday” and “tomorrow” are always in flux, which is why that five-painting suite is so expressive: It both freezes and multiplies the ideal instant of memory or anticipation. -Mark Jenkins June 26, 2015 Washington Post Caroline Adams - 50 Egg Tempera Paintings Counting a few on adjacent walls, there are more than 50 pictures in Caroline Adams’s “50 Egg Tempera Paintings.” But then the main event in this Susan Calloway Fine Arts show could be calculated as a single work: The cloud-heavy landscapes on wood panels are grouped together tightly as a unified layout composition. If the multitude of images suggests the influence of mechanical or digital reproduction, Adams’s millennia-old medium demands human dexterity and spontaneity. Egg tempera dries quickly, so the painter must work at its speed. The local artist makes a virtue of the process, leaving visible drips and allowing the panels’s grain to show through translucent washes. While two of the pictures are in shades of gray, the rest emphasize earth tones, often topped by subdued blue skies. The compositions emphasize the horizontal, even when the panels are vertical. Cloud formations hover, filling the skies, their vaporousness conjured by the near-liquid quality of the pigment. Perhaps 50 paintings are not enough to capture the sky’s ceaseless flux, but Adams does have a gift for conveying the ephemeral. -Mark Jenkins August 22, 2014 Washington Post Caroline Adams - Time of Day Pennsylvania-bred landscape painter Caroline Adams depicts both the Mid-Atlantic states and Ecuador, where she lives. The South American country offers more dramatic views, with deeper valleys and higher mountains. But Adams isn’t particularly interested in drama, as the title of her show at Susan Calloway Fine Arts indicates. “Time of Day” uses muted colors and soft forms to conjure such ever-changing natural phenomena as clouds, storms and light. Adams has a degree in printmaking, which may explain why she paints multiple views of similar vistas, sometimes dividing them into diptychs or triptychs. The show’s 14 small “Variations,” executed on panels with egg tempera and oil, are hung together in clumps, as if to offer simultaneous views of the same (or almost the same) scenery. It’s an idea that probably wouldn’t have occurred to a painter before the advent of photography, but Adams’s execution of it feels more classical than modern. -Mark Jenkins February 9, 2012 Washington Post Rolling Clouds 2, a painting by Caroline Adams, commands the space above the fireplace. -Krissa Rossbund, Traditional Home |