Jeanette Lee Adams
Contemporary classicism exploring the sacred within ordinary life.
I paint moments in which the visible world opens toward something unseen. My work explores where love, mortality, suffering, beauty, and hope meet.
Turn on the Light
36 x 36, Oil on linen
A child turns toward the light. Seeking clearer vision often requires courage and discomfort.
Revision
36 x 36, oil on linen
A child studies her own self-portrait with scrutiny and self-reflection. Growth begins the humility to see ourselves clearly and recognize the errors and distortions in how we see others.
Becoming
36 x 36, Oil on linen
A young woman pauses to smell a flower, absorbed in the quiet discovery of her own becoming.
Gathering
36 x 40, Oil on linen
She gathers what she can, trusting that a small offering is enough. There is faith in the humble work of preparing, carrying, and continuing.
I'll take you home
36 x 36, oil on linen
She carries what is most precious through the indifferent machinery of the city. Sometimes love is simply helping someone find their way home.
Sailing
30 x 40, oil on linen
The horizon offers no guarantees. Still we raise the sail. There is faith in moving toward a light we cannot reach.
Hope
36 x 40, oil on panel
Beyond the tangled places of life, light waits in the distance. Hope doesn't erase the thorns, but offers direction through them.
Where ordinary life becomes luminous
My paintings begin with seeing something ordinary like a child, a flower, or a landscape which through it I find meaning, hope, grace, and transcendence.
Currently in the studio
I am currently developing a new body of work exploring transformation, adaptation, stillness, and ways light enters the mortal experience.
Available originals
Tree of life in NYC
60 x 80, oil on linen
Amid the vertical intensity of the city, a tree offers another kind of architecture, a living counterpoint to the search for transcendence.
Uprooted
16 x 20, oil on linen
Wildflowers carried through the city become a meditation on displacement and transformation. Even when uprooted, we may discover new ways to take root.
Brotherhood
36 x 36, oil on linen
Pulling, lifting, exerting toward freedom and safety, each trusting in strength beyond one's own.
Survival
36 x 36, oil on linen
Flowers are unable to remain. Their brief beauty asks us to notice what is here now while it is still here.
Fine art prints
Selected paintings are available as archival Giclée reproductions, printed to order.
Join the studio letter
Receive occasional letters from my studio about new paintings, exhibitions, and stories behind the work by joining my email list.