Real Presence: New Paintings by Patrick Adams in our second floor gallery. A Gallery Hop reception will be held for the artist on Friday, November 19, from 5 to 8 p.m.

Adams will be showing 12 new paintings that are beautiful, powerful, and evocative abstract landscapes. His richly colorful and luminous paintings are made of several layers of paint; he paints, scrapes away and repaints, repeating the process until the image and the surface become a dreamlike vision.

The new works continue in the rich vein Adams began four years ago when he spent a month painting in France. Adams explained that what began as an emotional response to the landscape has become, over time, "a pictorial metaphor for my relationship to the world. The formal elements, marks, textures, etc., exist on the canvas as existential signs, pointing iconographically toward the real presence of the image. This kenosis, or 'emptying' of the image of all that is extraneous to this end creates a delicate balance between what is said and what is left unsaid. It is here, in this fragile tension, that my work finds its true meaning."

Adams was born in Worthington, Minnesota and came to Lexington to enter the graduate program at the University of Kentucky where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1992. He has twice been the recipient of the prestigious Al Smith Fellowship, awarded by the Kentucky Arts Council. He taught for several years in the Art Department at Asbury College, and now works full time in his studio. His work has been included in many exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the region, and he shows his work regularly in Chicago. Adams was featured with 14 other Kentucky artists in the KET (Kentucky Educational Television) series, Looking At Painting. His work is included in several private and corporate collections.