Biography • Carol Adelman
Carol Adelman is an artist working from observation and its imprint on her imagination in painting, drawing, and printmaking. Puzzled by the historical representation of women in art and culture from an early age, her work explores the gap between said representation and lived experience. The lifelong bedrock of her studio practice is the live study of the human form.
Born in the Bronx, NY, Carol Adelman has a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University. While working on the education staff at the Phillips Collection in Wash. DC, her intimate relationship with the paintings became the foundation of her visual and historical vocabulary. At the University of Washington, where she earned her MFA, Adelman began to integrate critical theory into the development of her work.
Her work has been exhibited nationally at venues including Davidson Gallery, Meloy Gallery, Bellevue Art Museum in Washington, Washington Studio Courtyard Gallery in Wash. DC, and the Bowery Gallery in New York among other venues. She has held academic appointments at Louisiana State University, Kutztown University, Dickinson College and the University of Washington School of Art.
Artist’s Statement
My work stretches traditional forms to encompass contemporary ideas of constructed identity and a fragmented self. I take a sensual, aggressive approach to my materials. approaching paint as both a liquid and as a sculptural material.
I am interested in the tenuous balancing act required to negotiate the gap between lived experience of the flesh and the norms projected by visual culture and art history. I work with growing root vegetables,angelic doll confections, and the mismatch between these metaphors for the body.
When I paint and repaint the sitter the object, the space, or myself, time passes. Every minute is unique. The impossibility of finding a fixed visual moment, a fixed conception of identity, or an edge, dogs my work. The act of painting becomes a practice of radical empathy, of walking within the skin of a person, an object, a space, or a historical practice. What remains is a residue–a history of overlapping moments and layered imagery that becomes a record of the consciousness that hangs between us.
Bibliography
Matthew Kangas, Carol Adelman: House of Mirth, Review, Visual Art Source, August 10, 2024
Matthew Kangas, Carol Adelman: Houses of Mirth, Highlight, Preview Art Magazine, June-August 2024, https://preview-art.com/highlight/carol-adelman-house-of-mirth/
Shanak, Finding healing and the self in art: ‘Negative Capability’ at Gallery 110 presents artists’ introspection amid beautiful uncertainty, Real Change News Jan 25, 2023
Matthew Kangas, Negative Capability: The Artist as Healer, Highlight, Preview Art Magazine, https://preview-art.com/highlight/negative-capability-the-artist-as-healer/, Nov 2022-Jan 2023
Matthew Kangas, Three Brilliant Artists You Have Never Heard Of, Feature article, Visual Art Source, https://www.visualartsource.com/index.php?page=editorial&aID=5629
Regina Hackett, Outside the mainstream - women who move mountains, Art Journal, Another Bouncing Ball, www.artsjournal.com/anotherbb/2010/02/outsidethemainstream---women.html, February, 14, 2010
Joey Veltkamp, (interview) Carol Adelman/Kittredge Gallery, Best Of: A Northwest-centric Artblog http://joeyveltkamp.blogspot.com/2009/03/carol-mallett-adelman-kittredge-gallery.html, March 17, 2009
Barbara Ryan, Face Value, Fine Art Gallery at Broward County Community College, catalogue
Alec Clayton, Beatrice Geller & friends hang at Pacific Lutheran University, The Weekly Volcano April 26, 2007
Maura Doern, The Body Show, (Catalog), AIP Gallery, Pgh. PA
Review: Victorias Ellison, "Reality Bites: Two Shows Turn Art History of its Ear", Seattle Weekly, January 27,2000,Pg. 31
Debbie Lester, "Eye, I", b/w reproduction, Art Access, February 2000
Biography, Who’s Who in the West, Millennium Edition, Marquis Who’s Who, 2000
Ann Seeley, Pratt Instructors Exhibition, Art Access, 1998, November
Debbie Lester "What Timing", b/w reproduction, Art Access, May 1997