About the Cover- Issue 2
Joy Adams, The Flying Lesson, oil on linen, 65"x60" (detail), 2003 The Flying Lesson is a fl ight of fantasy and imagination. It conjures up something reminiscent of Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, or a stained glass window, or a grand fi nale smile during the rapture of an ascension. The painting also yields deeper truths, and is suggestive of a yearning for another culture and time from long ago.
The Flying Lesson belongs to an evolving series of paintings called Mad Sally’s Marvelous Adventures that falls into the traditional category of fi gurative representation. Painted in a deliberate manner and with a reverence for the legacy and history of art, these works are, at the same time, contemporary narratives. Each of the works celebrates a negative stereotype. They reveal an alter identity in an audacious character contained within an imperfect body. In a cultural climate that rejects age and imperfection, Mad Sally holds her ground as she postures, ever ready to abandon her dignity and defy all the standards of proper comportment and behavior. Sally is a strong-willed and visual affi rmation of mature woman as Super Hero, a lone feminine ego who lives in a mythic world. Her scenarios oscillate between truth and fantasy and are set into fabricated landscapes where feeling takes precedence over actuality.
Mad Sally opens passageways to a wellspring of ideas that trigger memories of my working class British roots, and the immigrant experience in America. The journey is an engrossing and deeply felt one, as Sally continues to strike out in ever-evolving directions. Whether she is introspective, edgy, or comically tinted, Mad Sally is my muse—an incarnation of splendid individuality.
~ Joy Adams
The full painting can be seen on page 225 of Issue 2.
Raised in London and educated at the Maryland Institute of Art, Joy Adams has had a long and successful career in Upstate New York, teaching art at SUNY Brockport, SUNY Potsdam, and Ithaca College. Since retiring from academe, she has devoted herself full time to her painting, with shows at Binghamton’s Roberson Museum and Science Center, Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Museum, the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, and SUNY Oswego’s Tyler Art Gallery.
