LINDA ADCOCK

It is with great pleasure that North House Gallery presents this retrospective show of work by Linda Adcock. There are large, and very large, paintings in oil on canvas and a selection of small figure drawings.

Born in 1949, it is high time that Adcock was accorded a retrospective. Her output has not been huge in quantity as each painting has taken a long time, sometimes years. Early influences were Cézanne and Rothko, but she was first put on the path of still life by a Morandi show at the Royal Academy in 1971. As a student at the Royal Academy Schools, where she studied under Roderic Barrett, she was known to spend an entire term, all day, five days a week, on one still life painting. She was also interested in the way a group of fellow students, followers of Euan Uglow, set up a life model in the same position for a whole term. The influence of Uglow’s methods of visible measurement marks, geometric planes and subtle gradations of colour are still
present in the most recent of her paintings, Two Orange Chairs, which she proudly announced completed and which inspired the idea of this show.

I paint still lifes/interiors and life paintings. I work directly from the subject using setups comprising painted screens and door panels, against which I carefully place the model, a table, a chair, a ladder or a pot. In recent years, the setup has provided a starting point from which the painting develops in an organic way, until the composition feels right.The work explores the relationship between the subject and large areas of colours.
- Linda Adcock 2023

Adcock trained at Sir John Cass School of Art (1968-9); Canterbury School of Art (1969-72) and the Royal Academy Schools (1973-76). She has shown in London, Germany and Florence and, since living in Colchester, widely in East Anglia, often the RA Schools East Anglia Group and the Colchester Art Society.