Yura Adams Is On This Particular Spot On the Planet Right Now
An Interview with Visual Artist Yura Adams
Yura Adams is an artist known for her vision of nature observed within the immediate locale of her studio in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Adams looks just outside her door at weather, insects, birds, and biological growth, expressing what she sees through abstract painting, sculpture and installation. Each work is created with intuition and improvisation as Adams finds form and imbues it with narrative presence. Her art is a full-blown response to being in this particular spot on the planet.
Having survived as a working artist for decades, Yura sat down with Elizabeth to discuss persistence, the natural world and its detailed spontaneity, and the excitement of making art in 2025.
On May 8, 2025 Adams opens Companion, her second solo exhibition of paintings and installation with Olympia in New York City.
ELIZABETH: In your own words, could you please tell me about who you are and your artistic practice?
YURA: I was born in Sioux City, Iowa—that's the northwestern corner of Iowa—to a family of six children, and I was the second youngest. I'm going to get into my background a little bit more further on, but I'd like to talk about who I am right now.
I am an artist who makes paintings, sculptures, and installations. I live and work in a place that is surrounded by nature. It is the stepping off point for a lot of the work that I do. I like to describe my work as a search for form–I approach making my work with this mentality. And as I'm making my work, I tie into a methodology of improvisation that I've developed so that I can stay as free as possible. I've been making art my whole life, with the exception of a 10-year break. I consider those decades of making art to be a big part of my practice.
ELIZABETH: I grew up in Chicago. So, whenever I meet a fellow Midwesterner, it makes me so happy. I feel like we aren't few and far between on the East Coast, but it is always just such a treat. And I'm also one of four, so not quite as big as one of six, but a big Midwestern family.
YURA: Numbers make a difference! And where are you in the lineup?
ELIZABETH: I'm the oldest and the only girl.
YURA: Ah, so you had a lot of responsibility for your brothers.
ELIZABETH: So much! Back to you, I would really love to know what that moment was when you realized that you wanted to become an artist. I think there is a difference between—and maybe you don't agree—realizing you want to be an artist and then realizing that you also want to make a career as an artist. I'd love to hear in your own words, what those two moments were. Were they the same moment? Were they different moments? When did they occur?
YURA: That's really great that you made that differentiation. In my family I was labeled the artist. I grew up with that title. It was something that came very naturally to me, and I was encouraged by my mother who praised anything that was creative.
In my early years, what being an artist meant wasn't as defined for me. Instead, I had a kind of a naive acceptance of what an artist could be. But then there was this moment I had gone off to California to just explore. When I came back, I was quite depressed, so my mother took me to the local library and she said, “we're going to figure out what you're going to do next.” And she reached into the college catalog shelf and pulled out the catalog for the San Francisco Art Institute. She said, “how about this one?” So, I applied and I got in.
That was the moment that I accepted the career path of being an artist. I didn't know what it meant. It's a big difference between deciding and actually living. And of course, I don't think one really understands what it means until you leave school.
I was lucky enough, out in San Francisco, to be able to work at the Art Institute after I graduated. I was so immersed in the art world out in the Bay Area, that it was a seamless transition [after graduating]. But I knew that all along that this, [being an artist], was going to be my path. And I knew that I had to figure out how to make this path work. A lot of people go into teaching. I didn't want to do that right away. When I moved from the Bay Area to New York, I did a lot of odd jobs in order to support my studio practice in New York. Eventually, I did end up teaching because I had those degrees, and I used them. It was good that I had those degrees.
So, I have to say it was kind of a seamless transition.
ELIZABETH: It sounds like it was. I also genuinely believe that both as a creative person, and in general, we are our community. The people who support us and raise us are the people who make us. And it sounds like your mother was a very, very influential force in letting you allow yourself to become a creative person, to become an artist. If you're comfortable, I'd love to hear more about that and that relationship with your mother. And also about other communities that you found when you moved to the Bay Area and then that you found when you moved to New York that really enabled you to continue this work.
YURA: Well, my mother was a huge driver, as I've mentioned. She was not an artist herself, but she admired writers in particular, and she took us around whatever cultural events we could attend. I got to go to a lot of lessons and, because there were a lot of us–my mother was constantly running.
Unfortunately for my mother, she had a mental illness that came upon her when I was 12. From that point on, there was a certain amount of disassociation of my mother and from me in my life. When I went out to San Francisco, I had to create a community. I was very, very fortunate to find people who allowed me to embed myself into their group. There were a couple of artists in particular who took it upon themselves to really be my guides in my art career. As a result, I was able to progress. I was able to get shows. I was able to make connections and get grants really because of those people helping me along the way.
So, you are absolutely right. I totally believe that we are a symbol of the people who are interested in us and who we are, in turn, interested in. When I moved to upstate New York, there was that 10 year hiatus. Now, I have a different group of people that I've created a community with living upstate made of the artists who surround me up here.
ELIZABETH: You mentioned that art was always an engine for you. I tell everyone I'm sitting on a stove of passion and I need a way to channel that passion so I don't explode. That's what creation is for me. I wonder, do you feel a duty to create in any particular way? Or is creating truly a duty to yourself. Do you feel you owe it to yourself to continue feeding this drive to create? Or is there something or someone else beyond you that you feel it is your duty to create for?
YURA: I would have to say it's my inner drive. I have always made work. Even when I was raising my children, I was still doing stuff just in a different form at that time. I'm a true believer that creativity isn't necessarily just the creation by the media that is traditional, like painting, sculpture, whatever.
The drive that I was born with, I think it was established as a pattern, as I mentioned. I have found that if I don't make work, I'm extremely unhappy. Every day I come down here [to my studio], and I make work. It's consistent. It's built in and I can't avoid it.
I started out as a painter in art school, and I got to know a bunch of photographers who taught me photography. I got this idea, which was a very painterly idea, to build sets and photograph them as a kind of photography. So, I moved from painting to photography. And then from there, I encountered another group of people (this is still in the Bay Area) and got interested in performance art, so I started building sets and puppets and masks. At the same time, I was doing photography.
When I moved to New York 10 years later, I was still showing that photography and making performance art.
I took a 10-year break when my ex-husband and I opened up an old hotel on the Hudson River in Athens, New York. It was so consuming that I couldn't make my work. Then I had my family and so, I didn't really make art as I had been making it in the past. I gave up making art. I experienced what it was like to give up something that you really need, and it was very depressing for me. I felt like half a person. I used to use this analogy: I was kind of like a peacock going around the hotel with my feathers dragging.
It wasn't all negative, there were a lot of great things that came out of that. Certainly my children were the great gifts that I got. But I did give up making work and pursuing a career for 10 years.
Anybody who reads this interview needs to know that if you have the drive, it's always there. It's just waiting for you. It doesn't go away. It may manifest itself in different ways. Certainly for me in terms of my child-rearing, it manifested itself. But I was also decorating the hotel. We had a lot of renovation to do in it. And a lot of that creativity went into the creation of the hotel and the running of it. Fortunately, I'm not doing that anymore. That was a long answer to your question.
ELIÅBETH: It’s a phenomenal answer. What enabled you after that 10-year hiatus to get back into creating? Not that you weren’t creating in that period—but back to how you’d been creating before.
YURA: The hotel fell apart and my marriage fell apart simultaneously. I had two small children, and I was facing having to not only reinvent myself financially, but also finding a place to live and support my girls. And then, on top of it, there was the art question. I remember vividly saying to myself, “well, whatever it takes to make my art again, I'm going to do that.”
I lived that promise to myself. It was a very crazy period of finding a house. I found this 1810 Federal brick house that had 62 tires in it and four refrigerators! I got it for nothing. But you always pay one way or another. I had a big party with my friends who came over and helped me dump things into the dumpster. My girls moved in, and we lived there. We eventually renovated the house to make it a home. Simultaneously, I did have a room that I could call my studio.
I started painting because I couldn't really go back to performance art and photography–I didn't have a dark room anymore, and I was living upstate. So, I went back to painting. I thought, “Well, I can paint. I can go in my studio and between lessons or whatever I have to do for the girls, cooking them dinner, getting them to bed, making sure their homework is done. I can go in and paint.”
And that's what I did. I was fortunate enough. I thought, “Well, there's a lot of people out there who can teach painting and drawing and photography, but not so many who can teach digital art.”
ELIZABETH: Thank you so much for sharing that. It's such an honest, real story.
I would love to talk more about your art now, as it stands today. I know that you are very inspired by nature. How did you get into depicting nature? What draws you towards the abstract forms in your work?
YURA: It's a great question, and it is key to what I'm doing right now as an artist. Before I moved over to the farm where I live, I was a figurative painter and was showing my work in a gallery in Hudson. That was fine. It was interesting to me.
But when I moved to this farm, I started walking down from the house to where my studio is currently. What I saw was so interesting to me, because when you walk the same path every day, you get to notice changes in a different way. The details appear and then disappear. So, when I moved into the studio, which is located in the middle of a field—I'm sitting in it right now. We're on 75 acres, and it has a river on the north end and also on the east end, and a lot of acreage in between. That makes for a lot of habitat for insects, for birds, for native plants. I started seeing all of this.
The first body of work I called Nature Dress, because I wanted to make work about the patterning that I was noticing. I showed that work over at John Davis Gallery in Hudson.
As humans, we appreciate the mystery and the beauty of nature, but we don't necessarily grasp, fully, what's going on. I thought that that would be a wonderful way to embrace abstraction. That's why I paint abstractly, because I believe that nature itself is abstract.
Then there's another part. I got more and more interested in imbuing my work with a more poetic, less literal nature. I wanted the viewer to be able to draw on what they see and come up with their own interpretation. Abstraction gives one the freedom to do that because it's not spelled out. There's still recognizable elements in my work. I mean, people will look at it occasionally and say, oh, well, “that's an expression of growth. Or that might be how a flower is spreading, or that's an expression of the movement of wind,” especially when they read my titles. They can look at the title and then they can puzzle the piece out for themselves. That's what's important to me.
Abstraction is not a strict rule. For example, I put an owl in a painting recently that's recognizable, but I really like to look at the forms. Because of my background in photography, I keep an encyclopedia of forms on my computer, and I access that. I use the encyclopedia a lot for inspiration. I might look at that and do some printouts and have them around me. A lot of times, my work is not a direct translation of what I see, but looking at forms is a stimulus for my work.
I think that this driver that's in me, just to revisit that a little bit, is also an ally of mine. And if we can personify that driver / ally for a second, it's something that I rely on when I make my work. That's another reason I use abstraction—it is because the ally within me is unnamed. It's something that gives me answers when I'm improvising. It's hard to be verbal about it because it is something that's within myself. But right now, I am very, very interested in relying on that communication between my ally / friend. It is an energy of a sort, and it is what comes off my hand onto the surface or onto the sculpture.
ELIZABETH: You say that your art is a “full blown response to being on this spot on the planet.” How are you able to get to this spot? Why is it so important to you to share this spot through creative means?
YURA: I will start with the second half first.To share this spot through creative means, I need to limit the scope of my topic. I can't take on the world. I know that now.
I can get upset about what's going on in the world, particularly with what's happening to living creatures. I can only act and observe locally. I've decided that what I can see within walking distance here on the farm or out my windows is my source. That's helped me a lot because I was able to study the geology of the farm where I live, and learn about the living creatures, plants and weather here. I like to use apps to identify the native plants, and I categorize them on an Excel spreadsheet so I know exactly what it is I'm seeing. I keep a timeline record of when I see things during the seasons as they change.
Those actions have made me hyper-aware of what the earth is doing as it turns, as it tilts; what birds arrive, when they leave, what flowers open up. It's just made me a better human, I think, to be aware, and certainly a better artist because I know when to look for things now. The nature of the farm has entered this big stew that is my inner being.
The “full-blown” comment simply means that I am opening myself up more as I work. I'm trying to keep my paint loose, keep my mind open, and not overwork anything so that the communication is right there for the viewer to see. That's trickier than one might think. Painting is almost like balancing. If I find myself wanting to tighten something up to please the inner composer that I have inside, I usually try to avoid that, put it off, step back, look at the work, and keep the work in a more flow state, so to speak. That's my goal: to keep that full-blown response to the driver, the friend, the improviser in open communication.
ELIZABETH: Turning back to this theme of the working artist and the very nitty-gritty of what that looks like, can you share what role grants and residencies have played in your artistic career?
YURA: I have been very fortunate to have received grants and residencies. I am grateful because either one of those represents not only a leg up in terms of validating an artist, and all artists need validation, but also financially, the grants are wonderful. They can't really be used for permanent support, but receiving a grant (or grants) has made it possible for me to do things like buy a camera that I need, or replace a computer that blew up.
Those big capital infusions are very important to artists and so are the rejections. Any artist that's active has gotten rejections. It's part of being a creative being, learning how to tough out those rejections.
When you get validation from a grant or residency, it feels like a miracle because there's so many people who need support. You know, every artist out there needs grants and residencies, and we're all busily writing proposals, reaching out, trying to make connections. There's just not enough support for artists. Residencies I have received have been great to connect with other artists, and usually when I go to a residency, I experience some kind of a breakthrough, because of the newness of the situation, and the stimulation of the other artists around me.
ELIZABETH: The persistence that it takes to get these grants, to get these residencies, it really is a testament to your resilience and longevity. You're someone who's made art, and you've survived as an artist outside of art school for decades. What has contributed to that resilience, that longevity of your artistic practice?
YURA: Read all the books you need to read, journal as much as you need to journal and meet with friends and talk about creativity in making art. All of those are valid ways of getting into the studio, but there's only one thing that counts. That is the amount of work that you put in the studio day to day.
If I had any advice for people starting out, I'd say get in there and do the stupidest thing you can, because it will lead to something. Actually, try for stupid. I use that technique sometimes. Just approach your work. The important thing is to start and to keep the conversation going with your work. If the work gets cold, go make another stupid piece, and get that conversation going and going. Maybe it was watching my dad go to work every day, day after day, but I have a work ethic. It doesn't make me a better person, but it has helped me get into my studio.
Sometimes the stupid things become beautiful things, and they can lead you down a path that you need. It's getting that stimulation going and being able to access what you need to access. And for some people, it might be reading The Artist's Way, or getting up and journaling. I mean, everybody's got their own path, but be aware of it, and above all, get stubborn about it. That's the most important thing: don't let anybody tell you, (I'm talking about myself) through rejections, or whatever obstacle you might encounter, that you can’t do it. I've had plenty of rejections in my life. I've had to overcome a lot of obstacles. It doesn't make me a better person, but it certainly makes me a more stubborn one.
ELIZABETH: I am very proudly a very, very, very stubborn person, to the point that it's detrimental. I do love being reminded, not only that I have permission, but also that I’m encouraged to make stupid art. The world needs people just to make stupid art, and to keep going at it, and going, and going, and going, It's just such a lovely, lovely reminder that the people who have been doing this for so long make stupid art and let themselves make stupid art and that's how it all kind of works.
Yura: What I mean by that word stupid is not invested.
ELIZABETH: Exactly. Just create.
Yura: You just jump in and do the first thing that happens to you.
ELIZABETH: Exactly, exactly.
YURA: Sometimes I'll lay out sheets of typing paper on this big table I have and just make a mark and walk around the table and make a mark on each sheet of paper, and it inevitably leads to something. You know, even though I may throw out all those sheets of paper, it's a great way to get started.
ELIZABETH: What excites you about being a working artist in 2025?
YURA: Oh, there's so many things. It's absolutely a wonderful time to be alive as a creative person. For one thing, there's a connectivity that we all share. We’re able to see the work of many artists we never would have encountered because it'd be impossible to go to all the galleries that you have to go to to see the work online. And with the internet, you can also reach out and connect.
I can't tell you how many friends I've made simply because we're Instagram friends and we get to know each other that way. That's really wonderful. The technology, the fact that I can walk out with my phone and identify a native plant without having to go to the library or buy expensive books. I can just subscribe to an app, and I find out what the plant is. I mean, technology is a huge gift.
I know there's a lot of negativity about AI. I don't feel that way so much. I don't necessarily use AI right now. I may in the future because I'm somebody who likes to range around in new media. But the fact that I can sit at my computer and recompose my paintings, I do that all the time in Photoshop, and that’s huge. There's a lot of different ways I use technology. That's one of the reasons I'm excited.
There's so many different kinds of people who have their work out there in the public. It's an absolutely rich and wonderful time to be alive. When I was coming up as an artist, it was more male-dominated and there was this idea that was really put forward by art critics at the time that art was a timeline that went from one development to the other. Now the idea of the avant-garde—I don't even hear that word anymore—is not so important because there's people making work with all kinds of materials. There are people of every color, and sexuality, and background, and experience and we get to embrace all of them. It's just fabulous, I think, to be alive right now. I've seen so much more interesting work. I personally don't fit into the minimalist aesthetic. I honor it. I see beauty in it, but I am a definite maximalist.
ELIZABETH: To continue in that vein of excitement for creating in 2025, I know you have a show coming up at Olympia Gallery that opens on May 8th. Could share some more about that show, how you feel going into it, maybe how the work that kind of culminated in this show, whatever you want to share.
YURA: Thank you for that because this is my little ad, I guess. My moment to advertise!
Well, I'll give the facts first. The title of the exhibition is Companion, and it opens on May 8th and runs to June 21st at Olympia Gallery. That's at 41 Orchard Street between Hester and Grand on the Lower East Side. The opening, please everybody come, it is on May 9th between 6 and 8 p.m.
The title, Companion, was actually selected by my gallerist who came up here to see the work. I was talking about that thing that I've mentioned earlier in our interview, Elizabeth, which is that driver / friend / I'll add the word “companion” now. So this idea of the full-blown advocacy of an inner working is part of the show, and the paintings in the show are definitely coming out of that place.
I did something different this time. I put the paintings side by side as I developed them in order to create continuity from one to the next. So, I'll be showing a series of paintings. I also created a backdrop that goes behind the paintings. I was interested in creating a more immersive kind of installation. The backdrop is created out of excerpts of the paintings themselves, so there's this interesting conversation between the color in the paintings and the desaturated background. The forms are apparent in both, and I consider the exhibition itself as a piece really titled Companion.
There'll be a big new painting in the window that I just finished. It is so new that I feel like I haven't even seen it, but it went off to New York yesterday. I am looking forward to seeing it again.
I'm very happy you're asking me about my feelings. I'm very happy because I set myself a goal, and the goal was to create a cohesive body of work in an installation format, and I achieved that. It is a great moment because I sent off all the work for the show yesterday. The fact that we're having this interview right now is a wonderful moment in my life.
These days I am very fortunate in that I don't have to teach anymore. I ended up running a gallery for 20 years and teaching in a lot of different places. I know that a lot of artists take that route. It's a way to stay in the creative world, but right now I am so grateful that I get to spend my days in the studio.
It seems like a miracle, and my children are grown, and they're off on their own paths. and they very successfully launched. I'm very fortunate in that way, too.
I can't thank you guys enough for focusing on the stories of working artists. I think that it's important for people to read about how artists survive. What they actually do. What they actually do. We know what they do in the studio, but a lot of artists don't talk about how they're able to do that. So I'm grateful to Working Artist for this interview.
Yura Adams creates abstract paintings, sculptures and installations rooted in inventive shapes, distinctive movement of line and form, and palette of grays and bracing colors.
Solo exhibitions include Olympia (New York, NY, 2025-2022), NADA New York (New York, NY, 2022), and John Davis Gallery (Hudson, NY, 2016-2018). Recent group shows include Strohl Art Center, (Chautauqua, NY 2025), Vassar Art Library (Vassar College, NY 2025), Front Gallery (Houston, TX, 2024), Turley Gallery (Two-person, Hudson, NY, 2023), LABspace (Three-person, Hillsdale, NY, 2022), Woodstock Art Museum (Woodstock, NY, 2021), and Albany Airport (Albany, NY, 2021).
Adams has been awarded the Tree of Life Foundation (2023), Peter S. Reed Foundation (2022), Drawing Center Viewing Program (2021), Pollock-Krasner Grant (2019), Berkshire Taconic Foundation (2017), New York State Council on the Arts (2010), New York Foundation for the Arts Mark Program (2009), and the National Endowment for the Arts (1985).
In the early part of her career in New York City, Adams presented her work in locations such as Just Above Midtown, City Gallery, The New Museum, Experimental Intermedia, Franklin Furnace, and FOTO Gallery. She earned both her BFA (1975) and MFA (1980) at the San Francisco Art Institute.
You can visit Yura’s website at www.yuraadams.com
You can follow Yura on Instagram @Yuradams
get stupid! I really like that advice. whatever gets you to show up for the work 🐦👍