David W. Adkins won first place in oils at this year’s JEB Stuart Art Show. That winning painting, “Summer Field” is featured in Atkins’ show at the Patrick County Public Library, now on display through the end of January.
Adkins, a native of Pelzer, S.C., has lived in Martinsville since 1976. He retired in 2014 after 38 years as pastor of Starling Avenue Baptist Church. He recently attended workshops with artists Dominic Vignola and Joseph McGurl.
Adkins’ work has won recognition at regional art shows, and he was honored to have a one-man exhibit at Piedmont Arts in Martinsville.
Artist’s statement
Kant said that art’s function is in an area of human experience that is not dominated by “usefulness.”
When we are dealing with art, we are not asking, “But can I use this for something else?” We are seeing what a thing is in itself. Considering it for what it is within itself, not for what other purpose we might put it to.
Still, for me, painting draws us to the givenness of what is. It asks us to behold not simply the painting aside of questions of utility, but also what the artist reports. Or, as William Carlos Williams puts it:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
The focus of much modern thought has been on what is going on inside us — our mind or feeling — to the point that sometimes the reality of the way the world presents itself to us is ignored or doubted.
The exercise of art teaches us to be objective, not to neglect the material, to receive again the world as gift, before expecting it to be anything else, and to wonder like a child.
Painting is, for me, such a practice.
