BY DR. REBEKAH MCCLOUD, GUEST WRITER TO THE TIMES
ORLANDO – Donnell Adams has been an artist since 2001. He is primarily a portrait artist and has painted over 100 portraits. Adams also paints figures and still life in oil and watercolor. He learned to do watercolor while in high school. Instructors taught him to draw using pictures as references. “I was always drawing as a kid. I had a sketchbook with me all the time. I used to get in trouble for drawing on tests and homework,” said Adams. His art was influenced by the cartoons he watched. “Ernie Barnes was my inspiration. I use exaggerated characters in my art,” he added. Artist Ernie Barnes created the painting “Sugar Shack” which was part of the opening/closing credits for the 1970s TV show Good Times.
In 1999, Adams attended art school at the Academy of Art in San Fransisco, California. He spent three years learning forms, color anatomy, and lines. He studied illustration. Most of his paintings are portraits of figures or still life painted in oil. He started to paint in oil and learn about Black artists by name. “My mom had Black art in the house, but I did not know who the artists were.”
Adams moved from California and lived in New York City for a while before he moved to Florida. While in New York, he continued to create portraits. The move to Florida caused him to change his style. “I went back to using my imagination instead of people for inspiration for my art. I did not find the variety of interesting people in Florida like New York,” Adams said. Over the years, Adams experimented with his approach to painting. Often, he uses a white background, but recently, he has been using color to go with the color of the image he is painting. As a multidimensional artist, Adams draws illustrations using colored pencil and ballpoint pen. He also does digital art on his Wacom Tablet. He has never shown his illustrations. His approach to art is “Do what excites me, and maybe the viewer will get excited as well.”
In 2018, Adams was a student at Crealde School of Art. He won first place in drawing and painting. In 2022, his first solo show was at Park Drive Gallery (Sanford). He has since shown his work at Nude Nite, Fusion Fest, City Arts, and other places in Central Florida. Adams currently has a watercolor on display at a gallery in Rhode Island. The piece Adams displayed at the Puzzled Peace Initiative reception is called “Head Wrap” and is a tribute to his mother. It is currently on display at the Park Drive Gallery (Sanford). He said he hopes the initiative helps “tell the truth about Blacks in America. People need to know about famous black artists such as Henry Ossawa Tanner [the first African American painter to gain international acclaim] and Kehinde Wiley [African American painter who did the 2018 painting of President Obama].”
Go to https://www.donnelldonnell.com to see more of Donnell Adams’ work.
