Adam Closs

Adam Closs is a man who lives and breathes his craft. As an art student in 1973, he began creating collaborative abstracts using oil pastels by the hundred on huge sheets of photographic backdrop paper. These early works still influence him today, as he continues to specialise in abstract paintings created on canvasses of 4sqft and above. Huge swathes of colour absorb your thoughts, your stresses and all the minutiae of every day living.

“I’m happiest producing these huge things, even though they’ve kept me in relative poverty as most art lovers can’t find room for them,” he says. “But works like these don’t need as much wall space as you might expect. In fact, small rooms intensify the impact.”

In order to keep a roof over his head, Adam interspersed periods spent painting solidly with training and working as a carpenter and psychotherapist. He discovered that these professions benefited his art, rather than retracting from it, with carpentry giving him the opportunity to work on a three-dimensional basis, while physiotherapy included treating people with therapeutic massage, which helped him to focus the aim of his paintings.

“Colours affect you emotionally,” he says. “I like the idea that you can sit down in front of a painting, be drawn in by it, and emerge feeling calmer. For me blue is a very therapeutic, inspiring colour that creates space in your mind – room to just be. The spectrum between turquoise and violet is very relaxing. It’s a sort of antithesis to the stresses created by the troubles currently facing so many people.”

Adam’s latest exhibition, Blue Series, was inspired by a trip to Essaouira, Morocco, where the main colour used on the buildings is a wonderful rich blue, created by the pigment lapis lazuli. The collection comprises four abstract works large enough to lose yourself in. Evocative curls and lines swoop through the works, changing with the light so that every time you gaze at them you’ll see something new.

The paintings will be on show at the Grant Bradley Gallery in Bristol. Adam has exhibited at this gallery in the past, as well as at galleries in Essex, Newcastle Under Lyme and London.

Adam's working methods are straight-forward – he doesn’t plan, preferring to let his subconscious influence his work as he paints from dawn to dusk whenever possible.

“I’m obsessive really,” he admits. “Even if it means going hungry, I still have to do it. Somehow I’ve managed to survive and my work is beginning to sell well now. I’ve been producing paintings for 30 years and I’m not going to stop now.”

Blue Series, Grant Bradley Gallery, Number One St Peter's Court, Bedminster Parade, Bristol BS3 4AQ, from June 13-July 11 2009, details at www.grantbradleygallery.co.uk

Judy Darley is a freelance writer and editor based in Bristol. She is the founder and editor of EssentialWriters.com, a website for writers, by writers.