Behind the glowing colour and carefully layered texture of Jon Adam’s paintings lies a profound relationship with his environment, in particular the coastal landscape of his native Cornwall, and Dorset where he now lives.

In beautifully crafted works the abstract activity of paint finds equivalents to his observations and recollections. Each work captures a particular ambience: atmospheric colour suspended in mist, cloud or vapour, or the radiance of sunlight reflected on water. Sense of space and pure saturated colour are sometimes tempered by smaller sharply delineated accents that correspond to other observations of the beach environment: flora, seaweed, rusty oil drums.

It is revealing of the nature of his entire artistic concern that Adam chooses to create his own paints by grinding pure pigments and combining them with linseed oil. Just as the paintings are meticulously developed, and finely mediate between abstraction and figuration, the preparation of materials is also very particular.

Exquisite surfaces are the result, the hand-mixed paint producing a magical quality that brings the colour to life. In paintings that are powerfully suggestive the viewer is directed into an inner emotional landscape of immense resonance.

Adam was born in 1961 and brought up on the south coast of Cornwall. He is self taught in the traditional methods favoured by the old masters, and he has lived as a professional artist for most of his working life. His work has been shown widely in the UK in galleries, art fairs and regional open studio events. In 2003 and 2004 he exhibited at The Agora Gallery in New York, and recently with Thompson’s Gallery in London.