Welcome to EpigramIcon, where you’ll find a selection of my epigrams and paintings. Put simply, these words and images are reflections of one person’s cognitive, emotional and creative responses to the utterly astonishing realities of life and existence, inasmuch as our modest minds have been able to grasp them. Realities that encompass the bewildering cosmic, geologic, zoologic, anatomic, atomic and subatomic, as well as the rather less baffling ones reflected in our species’ brief social, political and cultural history on this beautiful planet, as it orbits its star in our minor galaxy. And all of it tending inexorably towards entropy…
Although epigrams and paintings can both have an instant impact when confronted on a page or canvas, they are of course quite different. Words are typically more charged with meaning, specificity and reference, while images – which have a far lengthier and more primordial role in human creative history – offer much greater formal freedom to deviate from the real. The effect on the perceiver also differs: an epigram succeeds when it surprises us with a flash of insight, preferably tinged with humour, while, for me, a successful painting immerses us in a sea of sensation and recognition, beyond words.
In any event, producing and regarding them has been the source of immense gratification for me and, I dare say, played a big part in gentling my days on Earth. But they are of course not all to everybody’s taste – little actually is. In principle, each one of us decides which products of human creativity and thought we personally most value as sources, for instance, of delight, wonder, inspiration and wisdom. Such preferences vary greatly and are part of the whole collection of values, needs and desires that are central to our lives and ultimately define who we are as individuals. In short, we are what we like, what we admire.
Personally, I have always been grateful beyond measure to those whose creations and thinking have kept me company and so enriched my own life. I can’t imagine what it would have been without their painting, writing, humour, music and films. In this context, I have included a large selection of brief quotations – mostly in English and hopefully sometimes unfamiliar to you – from some of these ‘friends’ of mine; you’ll find them on the ‘Quotes’ page, where, as in the case of the ‘Epigrams’ page, each text appears, in random order, for 15 seconds.
The site’s purpose is therefore to present you with these words and images, which I have created essentially to meet my own personal needs, on the off chance that some of you might appreciate some of them as well. They don’t call for analysis: they simply are. In truth, I don’t believe anything should stand between the work and the perceiver, who might be on the work’s same ‘wavelength’ (or in its vicinity) or not.
Nor, ideally, should information about their author get in the way. However, since some curiosity about who’s behind all of this is perhaps understandable, here is a little background. I was born and grew up in Brazil and went to secondary school in Wales and to university in Canada. I have worked in several sectors in different countries, and have shown my paintings in a number of places, usually ones I have lived in, like Madrid, Cologne, Amsterdam and Angoulême. I have also published an epigram collection and am working on a new publication (see ‘Book’ page). Today, I make my home in a French hamlet in Charente, where I paint, write, walk, swim, and contemplate and smile at the stars as serenely as the headlines allow.
Thanks a lot for dropping by.
Jim Adams
PS: The epigrams and images on this site are, as original work, implicitly protected by copyright. If you would like to reproduce any of them, please contact me (via the ‘Contact’ page) and I will most probably allow you to do so.