Marion Adnams (1898 – 1995)

Marion Adnams (1898 – 1995)
Highland (Island) Magic, 1938
Oil on board
41.9 x 32.3 cm
The Jeffrey Sherwin & Family Collection, permanently housed at The Hepworth Wakefield.

Adnams trained as a language teacher before studying at Derby School of Art and becoming an art teacher in 1938. In 1946, she became Head of Art at Derby Diocesan Training College. From the 1930s onwards she began painting Surrealist works, though she never officially joined the movement. The starting point for Adnams’ surrealist paintings were often natural objects seen or picked up during walks, or on regular trips to southern France, which she would then study and draw before incorporating into paintings.

She explained that the objects would then take on a surreal and mysterious life of their own as she altered their scale and created new settings. In this way, she described, she was able to bring back to life dead or inanimate objects. She was particularly affected by the destruction of the Second World War, and the illness and death of her mother around the same time. For Adnams, time for painting was squeezed around care for her mother, and her teaching. She later described the process of painting as an escape into what she called ‘the Enchanted Country’.