These digital reproductions of art by Carol Adelman are protected by international copyright law. Please do not reproduce them in any form without permission of the artist.
Structured after landmarks of art history, these paintings were developed from objects, and symbols of gender that I am both attracted and repelled by.
My work takes place on a ragged interface between abstraction and representation. I paint towards a melding of observation, memory, and imagination that mediates between visual culture and lived experience of the flesh.
I use objects and symbols of gender that both attract and repel me for the limiting nature of their perceived cultural meanings. The gathering of the image in the slipping liquid of paint humbles me just as it holds me transfixed. It falls apart even as it accumulates–a persistently building and crumbling illusion that has become a functional metaphor for the construction of identity on constantly shifting ground. Although insidiously elusive and ultimately unknowable, the embodiment of the subject remains urgently seductive and potently irresistible.
I cannot help but pursue it.