Marina Adams

This book spans nearly a decade of New York–based Marina Adams’ (born 1960) painting practice, culling and sequencing pages of images to highlight her bold pattern shifts. Fluently pushing color into form, Adams creates undulating shapes that reveal a powerful internal rhythm beneath their surface simplicity. Her work bears a Matisse-like connection to the intricate patterns of textiles as well as the rich designs of Moroccan rugs—and, for that matter, those by Sonia Delaunay. Another inspiration for the artist has been Moorish mosaics, such as the tessellated walls in the Alhambra palace in Granada, Spain, and the silhouettes of the ancient Greek caryatids which support the roof of the porch of the Erechtheion on the Athenian Acropolis. Painting by painting, the secret origami of Adams’ visual language unfolds as a favorite color travels across miles of canvas, absorbing rogue pigments along the way.