Critics’ Comments

“Among contemporary Impressionists, Californian Peter Adams ranks among the most accomplished. Whether working indoors or out, Adams emphasizes color effects and atmosphere rather than form and mass.”

Catesby Leigh, Art Critic/Writer
The New Traditional Styles
Art & Antiques
Summer 2002

“Peter Adams is one of California’s premier realist artists. He is also a romantic, who proudly continues a nineteenth-century ideal of painting as an expansion of our vision and emotions. Like Delacroix and Degas, masters of pastel, Adams uses the medium with astounding sensitivity. He prefers to work on location, so he is fully immersed in the scene. Typically he begins a pastel using broad sweeps of chalk. This initial lay-in of color is expansive, vibrant, and often resembles an abstract composition. As he continues to work, he defines features, capturing subtle nuances of form and tone. Peter likes to use his fingers in tandem with his chalks. Reserving one finger for each color group—red, green, yellow, blue—he gently rubs and works his pastels to create a dynamic range of effects. By building color and modulating edges, he is able to create the illusion of open air and solid mass, near and far, brilliant light and rich darks. Like the best romantic art, these pastels capture a scene but also transport you to a place that is wondrous and unforgettable.”

Michael Zakian, Ph.D., Director, Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art,
Pepperdine University, Malibu, California
Exhibition Brochure: Pastels of Malibu, Skidmore Contemporary Art
November 8 – 30, 2003

“In recent years, I have come to believe that the art appreciated by average citizens – not necessarily the avant-garde cognoscenti, but the art-loving public – is not to be discounted or dismissed in favor of whatever is hyped at the moment. Peter Adams… and many, many others, in this show and beyond are tremendously admired by art lovers today. They will be remembered and admired when many of those whose works grace the walls of contemporary museums and galleries have been relegated to footnotes or less in the art historical texts of the future.”

William H. Gerdts, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Art History
Graduate School of the City University of New York
Exhibition Catalogue: The American Society
of Classical Realism Guild of Artists
The Newington-Cropsey Foundation Gallery of Art
February 5 – April 30, 2001

“Much of Peter’s art evinces inspiration of Oriental design: the distinct shapes of his trees reflect his training in bonsai, and his use of large aesthetic shapes to depict fog or cloud reflect similar uses of negative form in Oriental Painting.”

Patricia Trenton, Ph.D., Art Historian
Exhibition Catalogue: Peter Adams and Daniel Pinkham:
The Aura of Nature: Painting Beyond the View
Joan Irvine Smith Fine Arts, Inc.
October 17 – November 15, 1998

“Painting en plein air, California Art Club leaders Dan Pinkham and Peter Adams explore the remaining pristine realms of the western environment, using impressionist techniques to capture these ephemeral spaces.”
Amy Scott, Curator of Visual Arts
Autry Museum of Western Heritage, Los Angeles
Land as Landscape: American Aesthetics and the Western Environment California Art Club Newsletter
February 2003

“Adams’ use of color is excellent, his compositions thoughtful and his brush strokes painterly in nature. He has his own unique approach to painting California mountains and the California coast… The end-results are pure Adams.”
Priscilla Fleming Vayda, Art Correspondent
A Visit to the San Gabriels
Pasadena Star-News
November 29, 2002