Chris
Adessa

The Painting Process

Every painting begins with a choice. Chris Adessa looks for an object so familiar it is easy to overlook: a light bulb, a paintbrush, a kitchen knife, a teapot, an old button hook. She weighs its form, function and details before she decides what to paint. "It grounds me as I let the subject talk to me and tell me about itself," she writes. "And then I paint." She paints in oil, mostly on panel, sometimes on canvas or linen, and often on tall, narrow panels of 48 by 12 inches that give a single object the presence of a standing portrait. Color stays out on purpose. Working in a finely nuanced range of blacks, whites and greys, she lets the viewer take in form and function at the same time, the way an old black-and-white photograph does. The meaning sits in the details: each subtle shift reveals something more, and, in her words, "my choice of details discloses as much about me as the subject." Her studio habits come from her years outdoors. A reaction to chemicals means she cannot share an enclosed room with other artists' solvents, so she paints with the window open next to her easel, in her studio above the San Francisco Bay in the historic ICB building in Sausalito. Many years of plein air painting, in the most challenging of conditions, taught her to adapt and to find ways to create she would not have found otherwise, and the voices of her teachers still guide her choices at the easel. The objects she paints are often ones she lives with. Her Santoku is the knife she turns to for most every task, "lovingly cared for, used and painted." Collectors can see the work in person during ICB/ART open studios or by appointment.