Victoria Adams

About

Victoria Adams has exhibited her contemporary American luminist landscape paintings extensively throughout her career with over 35 solo exhibitions in Seattle, Portland, New York, Boston, Chicago, Montreal, and Sun Valley ID. Her work has been featured several times in American Art Collector and has been pictured in such national magazines as Luxe, Traditional Home, and Veranda. Adams’ paintings are included in numerous private and public collections in the US and Canada, including the Tacoma Art Museum, the Boise Art Museum, Grand Valley State University, the Paul Allen Foundation for the Arts, and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation. A solo retrospective of her work at the Tacoma Art Museum, Where Sky Meets Earth: The Luminous Landscapes of Victoria Adams was accompanied by a publication of the same title. She lives and works on Vashon Island, WA surrounded by the wide horizons and eventful skies of the Pacific Northwest.

I am drawn to landscape–both the actual world around us and the painted landscape.  Each one enhances the other.  My painted landscapes have no direct counterparts in nature. Instead, I combine familiar elements of nature–weather systems, long horizons, grids of trees, expanses of water, and the atmospheres of light–using photos, direct observation and imagination.  My works also acknowledge the historical American and European traditions of landscape painting.   

There is a powerful magnetic sense in landscape that compels us to stop and take a good long look.  In a painted landscape, I am fascinated by the need to enter it and explore it visually and emotionally, to feel into it, to get from ‘here’ to ‘there’ and out and back to the distant horizon. The painted skies, filled with light and weather, extend infinitely into space and suggest the mystery of the ‘faraway,’  ‘just over the horizon,’ the meeting of past and future, and the landscapes of reverie and dreams.” 

— Victoria Adams

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2021         Distancing: Imagination and the Faraway, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL

2021         Painting Deconstructed: Selections from the Northwest Collection, Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA

2021         The Notable Collection, Vashon Center from the Arts, Vashon, WA

2020         Light Horizons, Woodside/Braseth Gallery, Seattle, WA

2019         New Small Works, Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum, ID

2019         Moment in Time, Anne Loucks Gallery, Glencoe, IL

2017         Fathom, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, OR

2017         Still Shores, Anne Loucks Gallery, Glencoe, IL

2016         New Works, Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum, ID

2015         Weather and Water, Arden Gallery, Boston, MA

2014         Reflect, Woodside/Braseth Gallery, Seattle, WA

2011         New Paintings, Arden Gallery, Boston MA

2011         Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL

2010         Where Sky Meets Earth: The Luminous Landscapes of Victoria Adams, Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA

2009         Lux Art Institute, Encinitas, CA

2009         Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner, WA

2008         Updraft, Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum ID

2006         Weather Shift, Winston Wachter Fine Art, Seattle, WA

2004         Depths and Horizons, Winston Wächter Fine Art, Seattle, WA

2003         Earth and Air, Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum, ID

2001         Recent Paintings, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL

2000         New Landscapes, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, OR

1999         Winston Wächter Mayer Fine Art, New York, NY

1998         Maryhill Museum of Art, Goldendale, WA

1990         Sheila Nussbaum Gallery, Millburn, NJ

1986         St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY

1984         Albion College, Albion, MI

Selected Group Exhibitions

2020         Conversations between Collections: The Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, WA

2019         Under the Influence: Contemporary Artists and the Masters Who Inspire Them, Somerville Manning Gallery, Greenville, DE

2018         Honoring Our Landscape VI, Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum ID

2016         Landscape!, Galerie de Bellefeuille, Montreal, Quebec

2013         Best of the NW: Selected Works from the Permanent Collection, Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA

2011         New Artists, Forre Fine Art, Aspen, CO

2010         New Dehli 2010!, Art in Embassies Program: New Dehli, US State Department

2009         Dreaming: Selections from the Permanent Collection, Museum of NW Art, La Conner, WA

2007         US Artists, Somerville Manning Gallery, Greenville, DE

2006         Art 2006, Galerie de Bellefeuille, Montreal, Quebec

2006         Landscapes Real and Imagined, David Klein Gallery, Birmingham, MI

2005         North by Northwest, Winston Wachter Fine Art, New York

1991         American Art in Embassies Program, US State Department, Lima, Peru

1986         Pacific States Printmakers Invitational, University of Hawaii, Hilo, HI

1980         Drawing Relationships with Prints, Davidson Gallery, Seattle, WA

Selected Public Collections

Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, Portland, OR
Arlington Club, Portland, OR
Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID
Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle, WA
Harborview Medical Center, Seattle, WA
Seattle University, Seattle, WA
Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA
Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner, WA
Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids, MI
Boeing Corporate Headquarters, Chicago, IL
Allen Foundation for the Arts, Seattle, WA
Nordstrom Corporation
U.S. Dept. of State, Washington D.C.
U.S. Embassy, U.S. Dept. of State, New Dehli, India
U.S. Embassy, U.S. Dept. of State, Lima, Peru
Zymogenetics, Seattle, WA
University Club, Portland, OR
Port of Seattle, Seattle, WA
SAFECO Insurance, Seattle, WA
City of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Bank of America Corporation
FDIC, Chicago, IL
US Bank, Portland, OR
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Whatcom Community College, Bellingham, WA
Washington State Public Schools, Seattle, WA
Providence Hospital, Seattle, WA
Swedish Hospital, Seattle, WA
University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle, WA
WRQ, Seattle, WA
Kaiser Permanente, Portland, OR
Collins Foundation, Portland, OR
American Airlines, San Francisco, CA
Texaco, White Plains, NY
Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, NV

Education

1979         BFA, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
1973         BA Honors, Literature, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH

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