Adam Forfang
October 2004
DESCRIPTION OF WORK
Adam Forfang is in some ways a typical 26-year-old — a music junkie perpetually wired to an MP3 player packed with songs by Radiohead, Lila Downs and the Kronos Quartet. Yet to collectors, the young painter’s landscapes, portraits and still lifes often seem to be the work of a much older artist, one who possesses abundant confidence and highly refined ideas about color, composition and mood. In his small oils on canvas or linen, Forfang frequently paints in vivid hues—lemons yellow enough to make your lips pucker, copper pots burnished to bright perfection — set against backgrounds dominated by darker, moodier colorations. The objects themselves also convey a certain tension: Supple tangerines contrast starkly with a rectilinear grid of white tiles; a luscious cantaloupe is both lovingly rendered and sliced apart with the clinical precision of an autopsy. Forfang’s overall style, too, represents a kind of balancing act—it is at once highly realistic and influenced by the looseness of impressionism. “I like to leave my brush stroke,” he explains. “I don’t do a lot of blending, and so you can see the movement of my hand as well as the color transition.”
METHOD OF WORK
As a student at San Francisco’s Academy of Art College (now Academy of Art University), Forfang spent his days making charcoal drawings of classical sculpture or painting live models in the studio. Even the finer points of this traditional training came to him naturally, recalls a former instructor, noted San Francisco realist Randall Sexton. “I would go over something at the beginning of class and 10 minutes later he could do it,” Sexton says. “He was amazing.” Forfang, who now teaches part-time at the academy, continues to follow this classical approach. “I usually start a new still life by going to the market and picking out the subject matter,” he says. “I always do a charcoal drawing, and then I spray-fix that and begin building up layers of color. I work mainly from life, but I sometimes supplement with photos or use my imagination to finish a piece.”
MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE
Forfang’s main artistic influences include Monet, Cézanne and Mexican colorist Rufino Tamayo (1899–1991). He especially admires Monet’s “Grainstacks” series of paintings from the early 1890s. “I like the idea of painting the same subject in different ways,” he says. “Limiting yourself really allows you to see how far you can push something.” Forfang reveres Tamayo for his command of color and mood, and Cézanne for his ability to transform the simple into the sublime. “A Cézanne still life might be filled with simple objects, but the artist’s experience and vision are so strong that the painting becomes transcendent,” Forfang explains. “That’s my goal with my still lifes.”
BIGGEST BREAK
Only a year after graduating from the academy in 2001, Forfang achieved a milestone that eludes some painters for much of their careers—a solo show at a major metropolitan gallery. Titled “Introductions,” his debut at San Francisco’s John Pence Gallery included 36 paintings, all of which sold. “There was a big turnout, and it was extremely exciting for me,” recalls Forfang, who credits his mentor Sexton for introducing him to Pence. “It gave me a taste of what it is like to be a professional artist.”
AWARDS & OTHER ACCOLADES
As a student, Forfang won five first-place awards at the Academy of Art College Annual Show: “BFA Still Life Painting” and “BFA Drawing/Abstract/Mixed Media,” both in 2001; “BFA Still life Painting” and “Portrait Painting,” both in 2002; and “BFA Still Life Painting,” in 1999. In 2000, he won a scholarship from the Montgomery, Alabama–based American Society of Portrait Artists.