Inside the Art: Joe Adams

In a second edition of “Inside the Art,” we’ll take a look and at the work and artistic process of Joe Adams, a GA-based artist who has four pieces featured in the showroom and online. These four Joe Adams pieces, which blend collage and painting, utilize a similar warm-toned color scheme and thus arrived at the showroom just in time for the fall and winter seasons. Read on to learn more about Adams and his artistic practice.

According to Adams’s personal website, it takes him “a lifetime” create a single painting. This statement alludes to Adams’s lifelong love of art and his constant desire to express himself creatively. Adams studied art at Mercer University then worked as an art teacher before his career as a businessman, and returned to painting later in his life. As his website attests, he “now works from his studio in historic downtown Macon.”

Macon’s unique urban yet small-town environment serves as inspiration to Adams, who established his studio space in a historic turn-of-the-century two-story house close to Macon’s downtown. Adams took his creative hand not only to the paintings he now creates inside the house, but also to the house itself. A recent article in Atlanta Magazine describes Adams’s talent for historic home renovation:

“Contemporary artist Joe Adams has restored several historic houses in his hometown of Macon, and this one proved to be the perfect space for his working studio and a gallery. On the second floor, he created an arty retreat that he rents via Airbnb, decorated with modern furniture and his abstract paintings alongside antique finds and Victorian woodwork.”

Atlanta Magazine article by Lisa Mowry

Leaving no trace of the historic home untouched, Adams turned the second story of the home into an AirBnB retreat filled with his own artwork and decorated with a fresh mix of modern and antique furniture and decor.

Both the art visible within Adam’s Macon Studio and the art we have in the ADAC showroom is marked by a sense of excitement and energy. Joe describes himself as “an Abstract painter” on his personal website and writes that “his more recent work is more characteristic of Action painting” and contains “bright colors and unexpected textures and layers.” His website lists “paint splotches, richly diverse color, and layered texture” as “definitive qualities of a Joe Adams painting.” These characteristics are evident within Littlefield Home’s four Adams pieces and although the pieces employ more muted color schemes, they stand out as distinctively Joe Adams.

Thanks to his new studio space and encouragement from his family, Adams is able to pursue art-making in his own hometown. On Macon, Adams attests in the Atlanta article that “‘Macon is so much more than what it seems from the interstate'” and that “‘the downtown is a very happening place.'”

We’re certainly glad Adams is GA-based and close by so we can include his art within our local-artists collection here at Littlefield Home.

Adam’s work is also available at Atlanta’s Jennifer Balcos Gallery and has been celebrated and exhibited at the following locations, as indicated by his personal website:

“Joe has exhibited work throughout the Southeast, including shows at Mercer University, The Summit One Gallery and CK Swan in Highlands, North Carolina; The Gallery at Macon Arts Alliance and Art On the Avenue in Macon; The Left Bank Gallery and The Parker Gallery on St. Simons Island, Georgia; dk gallery in Marietta, GA; dk2 gallery in Homewood, Alabama; Francie Hargrove in Cashiers, NC; and Bungalow Gallery, Miramar Beach, Florida.

He has been featured as an Emerging Artist at Museum of Arts and Sciences in Macon, and his diverse appeal lends his work to show houses in the Southeast and private and corporate collections across the United States.”