A Cooperative Art Gallery Showcasing Local Artists
About Us
Jean Adamson
Artist Statement
Jean is a largely self-taught painter, currently specializing in plein air watercolor painting.
She grew up in Baltimore, Maryland and, after living in Tennessee, Austria, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, has called Charleston, Oregon home for 15 years. Her husband cat and dog are pleased to live here, too. Her mother was quite an accomplished artist and insisted, over their plea to let them sleep, that her two daughters make the one-mile trek to the Baltimore Museum of Art for art lessons every Saturday morning for three years, Mom, it took! Thank you.
Jean trained as a scientist, specializing in marine phytoplankton and statistics and earned a PhD in 1986. She first came to Oregon's Bay Area in 1993 to do research at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology. She and her husband were delighted with the area and bought a home here.
The in the summer of 2004, while living and working in Albany, Oregon, she studied plein air painting with Mark Allison at Linn-Benton Community College and experiences the joy of tanslateing her fascination with nature into watercolor. After studying for another summer with Mark, she retired from her left-brained career in science and began concentrating on more right-brained endeavors.
In 2006, she moved with her husband to Washington, D.C. area for his new work assignment. There she concentrated initially on oil painting, but returned to watercolor in classes with Ed Ahlstrom at Montgomery College. Participating in the Artomatic events in DC for two years introduced her to the joy of exhibiting her work.
In 2009, she was privileged to travel to Umbria, Italy where she studied with watercolorist, Carol Maddox at La Romita School of Art and painted the hillside towns of the area. Se moved back from DC to Oregon in October 2009, immediately joined the Bay Area Artist Association and enjoys painting with the plein air group on Tuesdays. She exhibits regularly at the Artist Loft Gallery.
Her goal is convey in her paintings the communication she feels with the natural world. She feels that watercolor provides a sensitive and expressive medium toward this end.