Biography

Norman Adams R.A.

Master watercolorist, painter, stage and costume designer, mural and ceramics artist and teacher. Studied at Harrow School of Art 1940-46, then Royal College of Art 1948-51. From 1962-70 he was Head of the Painting School of Manchester College of Art, Professor of Fine Art at Newcastle University 1981-86 and then Professor of painting and Keeper at the Royal Academy, being elected R.A. in 1972. Norman Adams greatly admired the German Expressionists and Van Gogh and declared an ambition to paint profoundly religious pictures, although he was not a churchgoer and held no specific religious beliefs. He called himself 'a sort of freelance agnostic' and yet there was a spiritual intensity in his work be it of the natural world or a religious subject. Tate Gallery holds his work.