Norman Adams RA (1927-2005) Sunlight, Mountains And The Sea,
Scarp c1976 - A framed and mounted watercolour painting.
Norman Adams (1927-2005) was born in London and studied at Harrow
School of Art, where he won a scholarship to the Royal College of
Art. Later he held senior teaching posts at Manchester and Newcastle
before becoming keeper of the Royal Academy Schools in 1986, and
professor of painting from 1995 to 2000. Although not a church goer
himself, in the 1970s Norman Adams produced murals for St Anselm's
church, Kennington, south-east London (which he regarded at the time
as his major achievement), the ceramic reliefs of the Stations of
the Cross for Our Lady of Lourdes Roman Catholic church, Milton
Keynes (1975-76), and a wonderful series of paintings of the 14
Stations of the Cross commissioned for St Mary's RC church (The
Hidden Gem), Manchester. Adams and his wife Anna, also an artist and
poet moved to Yorkshire in 1956 where he built his studio, his
affinity with the landscape and the elements - "there is something
pure, clean in the hills and the sea," he said - led him and Anna to
explore the Outer Hebrides; from the mid-1960s Adams spent the
summers painting on the island of Scarp. His influences included the
English artists William Blake and JWM Turner as well as the German
Expressionists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde
