Adam Stegall

ecosystems

I began painting when I was 21 carried by deep inspiration from post World War II Abstract expressionist painters in New York during the mid 20th century. While studying painters like Rothko and Twombly in a contemporary art history course, I developed my own understandings and boundaries of what I think painting should be and how it should be done. Over the last year I quickly started to spend an excessive amount of time and money on my painting practice to develop my own techniques and conceptual approaches.

This publication is a collection of these paintings along with my own system of beliefs pertaining to the nature of gesture painting. The beliefs I hold in regards to how one should paint are:

1. Painting should not be representational. The painting itself might coincidentally represent a feeling, emotion, state of being, or an idea, but the painter should never attempt to paint anything.

2. The painting should be automatic. There can be no prior intentions as to how the painting should look or feel.

3. Paintings should be started and finished at the same time. You should never come back to an existing painting the next day to work on it further.

All paintings in this book follow these guidelines.

Throughout my lifetime, I will continue to see humankind destroy our planet and disrupt our ecosystems through strings of preventable environmental disasters. Although this work is non-representation, I assign the value of these said disasters to my paintings simply through the act of painting itself.

adamstegall.cargo.site
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adamjstegall@gmail.com

A grid of abstract-expressionist paintings on a white background. The paintings are made up of strokes of color on a canvas with no representational forms. Underneath the grid, my name and title of my work read, “Adam Stegall . . . ecosystems.”

Handwritten signature from Adam Stegall in black.

he/him