Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 3/17/2022
CUMMINGTON – Bill Adams had a high stress job in the Navy – he was head of aircraft maintenance for the Pacific Fleet – until he retired to Maple Leafs Farm with his wife, Jane, and began to paint what he saw in the world around him.
Adams built a studio and refocused his life on the family farm and painting. He developed new eyes. He sees the world differently now, even the ocean.
“The ocean’s not blue,” Adams said. “Well, yes it is, depending on where the sun’s shining. Sometimes it’s green, sometimes it’s grey, sometimes it’s a light blue, sometimes it’s a dark blue. We argue over color.”
Adams began discussing color in earnest this winter at the Cummington Community House, in a class with painting teacher Jeanne Johns. Painting is a lifelong fascination. He dabbled with paints while serving on aircraft carriers. Most recently he sought out a class at the Hill Institute.
“I was always seeking some form of instruction,” Adams said. “If I had to do my college education over again it wouldn’t be in biology. It would be a degree in fine arts, and business, and [I would’ve] gotten the instructions that we’re trying to catch up on right now.”
Johns, a painter with a worldwide following, pushed Adams and the other students to sensitize their eyes to the effect of juxtaposed colors. During the last session of the class the students painted squares of yellow and blue, then combined the colors to see, as it happened, the making of a green.
“You go on a hike and you’re looking around, and because of how she looks at color things are not grey or green, there’s a dash of purple, there’s orange in it,” Adams said. “So as I look at a possible piece of landscape to take a picture for a painting … [the colors make it] pop. That’s what I’ve been learning.”
Adams also learned to control the visual composition. He dug out a ten-year-old photograph of the Nauset Lighthouse on Cape Cod. The image was cluttered with elements he didn’t want to paint, including Newport itself and the Pell Bridge. Those elements went away, the scene became clean and simple, then Adams brightened it with energetic colors.
For Adams, the painting is an image of homecoming.
“Being a sailor, I always enjoyed the idea of coming into port, and how invigorating it always was,” Adams said. “I took that picture 10 years ago. I thought, now’s the time to pull that out and not copy the picture, but use it as a stepping stone for form, and use color to bring it out.”
Adams’ grandmother gave him a set of watercolor paints when he was 13. Now it seems fitting that his wife, Jane, is his biggest fan.
“I like to have them hanging up around the house where I can see them,” Jane Adams said. “He says we don’t need to put more up (but) I can always find another space on the wall.”
Maple Leafs Farm has been in Jane Adams’ family since the mid-1800s. The couple feels fortunate to be the ones to keep the property, up the hill from the fairgrounds, in the family. A large garden and maintaining the land keeps husband and wife busy. Bill also spends time in the studio he built over the garage, practicing a passion that has spread into the family tree.
“I have a grandson who’s 11, who’s also taken up painting,” Adams said. His grandson, Benjamin, won prizes at school and the Cummington Fair. “He’s getting coached, he’s doing quite well at it … His little brother Noah tries to keep up.”
The sea no longer draws him away, but color and composition offer Adams a new interest in life, a new challenge.
“You’re taking night classes in art, and how to use acrylics, and oils, pastels, and landscapes, how to draw figures, there’s just so much to learn,” Adams said. “There’s an open book of possibilities, paths you can go down. It’s exciting.”