Adam Caldwell

My paintings and drawings blur the line between abstraction and realism. During my training at the California College of Arts and Crafts, I created collage drawings that layered disparate images on top of one another. I now use oil paint in a similar way, starting with an abstract background, then working digitally to create designs adding photorealistic details, allowing the work to dictate its own construction.

Through the resulting palimpsest of figures and abstract shapes, I hope to evoke the tensions between mind and body, self and other, present and past. I am deeply concerned about the world around me, and my work reflects my reactions to social issues such as war and consumerism by contrasting images from American advertisements and popular culture with images of rituals from around the world. My paintings also raise questions about the nature of identity, particularly concerning issues of gender and sexuality.

The eclectic nature of my work reflects my wide range of interests and influences. My figurative painting and drawing has been influenced by the realistic yet expressive work of Odd Nerdrum, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Antonio López García, Jenny Saville, and Barron Storey, whom I studied under at CCAC. Theories of consciousness by philosophers such as Daniel Dennett also inform my art work. I am inspired by my grandfather, author Erskine Caldwell, and his commitment to representing the unseen and marginalized members of our society. I am also heavily influenced by music, movies, and comics, all of which have shaped my identity. I am an accomplished guitarist and martial artist, and these disciplines also inform my artistic perspective.

One of my most important areas of inspiration is the community of artists I surround myself with. Painting in particular can be a very lonely and isolating practice, so I make a point to attend drawing groups and share studio space with other artists. Although the process can be solitary, I paint to commune with others and allow them entrance into my interiority. Painting connects me to my world and times and culture. I always hope to create work that will invoke in someone else the feelings I have had before great art.

-Adam Caldwell

New York 1956 #2, oil and collage on canvas, 2018

New York 1956 #1, oil and collage on canvas, 2018

Emergant Materialism, oil and graphite on canvas, 2013

Q&A Between Brett Amory and Adam Caldwell

BA: We have had many conversations about process and aesthetics. Your work is characterised by a combination of figurative and abstract elements. The blending of the two draw my attention to the Leipzig school. Can you talk about your dedication to technical skill and figuration and the influence of abstract painting?

AC: I’ve always been attracted to abstract work. Franz Kline is my favorite because of the power of his deceptively simple shapes and how it hovers around figuration. His dialectic of positive and negative shapes and use of pure black and white is painting stripped down to it’s essential core.

I studied with abstract painters in school and their teaching was very important in informing how I think about the construction of more realistic work.

Realism, figuration I use because I feel it communicates much more effectively to a wider range of viewers. Abstraction, however much I love and appreciate it, will always be outside of the scope of most peoples aesthetic. I also get a real visceral satisfaction from “getting it right” nailing a realistic shape and popping the 3-d form out from a 2-d space is really just a trick,but it's a good trick.

BA: You talk about allowing the work to dictate its own construction. I know you use photoshop as a tool for composing images. In what ways does the work dictate its own construction? Does this happen in the digital process or does the painting inform and change itself through process over time?

AC: I used to just start with no plan and an abstract background. Then I would start by adding elements one by one, each placement would suggest where the next would go and eventually the growth of the composition would emerge. I now start with sketches and ideas and then work in photoshop. I use a lot of randomizing techniques to get stuff into places I don’t really plan, but I keep tweaking the composition until it works. Then I transfer it to the canvas as an accurate drawing using a grid or tracing. Once the painting begins the composition can be radically altered by the process of painting which, in its movement from collage to drawing to painting starts to dictate changes that can't be predicted in the earlier stages.

BA: Your work seems to hover somewhere between Socialist Realism, abstract expressionism and Pop Art. I love the collage aesthetic found in paintings like New York 1956 #2 where you have a depiction of an “all american” couple juxtaposed with symbols of revolution and the proletariat. Can you talk about the dichotomy of imagery and aesthetics found in a lot of your work?

AC: I think that at some level I’m interested in depicting in and through the painting process I use aspects of society that mirror that process. I’m interested in a technique that has conflicting elements, that is constantly changing, that doesn’t always work, that is in a struggle with itself. So, I use those same aspects of society as the visual elements in my work.

What I mean is that I want the images in my painting to be in harmony with the conflicted nature of my painting process itself.

BA: Your work is inspired by history, politics, and philosophy. Metaphysical and philosophical duality seem to be recurring themes in your work. Can you talk about mind-body or mind-matter dualism found in your work?

AC: I see mind-body dualism as a bad idea. It splits us off from nature and ourselves in a way that is reflected in environmental neglect, colonialism, racism, religion, etc. I also think that it's just philosophically wrong. Talking about mind-stuff as opposed to physical-stuff is more a problem of the limitations of language and the complexity of the brain than as a valid ontological statement of opposed categories of being..