NEWMAN, adam - REST AND DIGEST

What started as an experiment to be even more automatic in my work revealed the influence of East Tennessee in the first painting (Primitive Romance), and has since evolved into a new body of work. An exploration of a time of "rest and digest". Rest and digest is a response to the feeling of being safe and secure opposite of the fight or flight response. This journey has since revealed to me what I would consider the safest place & time I've ever experienced in contrast to the following years. The property my grandparents once lived on in East Tennessee, a region which my family has lived for generations. The 3.5 acre parcel is where my imagination took shape. The time spent in the kitchen, garden, surrounding woods, and byways left such an impression on me that I feel I have grasped to regain a familiarity of it ever since. Such is evident in the images being produced through the automative approach to making this work.

The work is presenting as texture heavy, playful in scale, earthy in palette, primitive & folk-like. A lot of the process has been an exercise of applying media and then taking it away while also carving into the wood painting surface. Unlike previous work, here the process is the captain.