The eccentric madcap Sally is partly autobiographical, representing a composite of English characters from Adam’s childhood during WW II. Growing up outside of London with working class people; bawdy, blowzy and laughing together in the face of adversity and hardship, the various depictions of Sally are a theatrical narrative of Adam’s experiential observations.
With plenty of wit and imagination, Adam’s has created Sally who defies convention and challenges the stereotypes of how women should present themselves in our culture. The images of Sally are refreshing and amusing. She is completely grounded in her own body, unabashedly behaving in the most unpredictable manner and dressed without a care.
Although Sally takes center stage, the landscaped settings that have been created for her become part of the emotional theater of the paintings. Some oscillate between truth and fantasy and others are of a genre between landscape and still life, capturing the larger plant life and also undergrowth at ground level inhabited by mushrooms, thistles, a tiny bee underfoot, a mouse or a gossamer dandelion. These minute, exquisitely painted details add a sense of intimacy, as if we can step through the looking glass.