This painting is called 'Adam Arise!', with an exclamation point, it's an order instead of a request. It is 60 x 48 inches, I finished it on New Year's Eve in 1983. People have asked why I didn't put in the Garden of Eden. For two reasons, one, it messed up the composition, and the other, it took away too much from the action that's going on at the moment. I had a couple of models, I had a stick with a rag at the end of it to help soften the end of the stick, but the people couldn't take it there more than a couple of minutes, so I had to use my mind instead.
Sketches: Arisen from the Dustbin of History
For his painting "Adam Arise", Vernon did quite a bit of sketches. Here we've gathered a number of them for you to look through. A peer into the mind of the master painter that is, Vernon E. Finney. As we glimpse between his varied compositions leading up to the final act of creating the painting, we can marvel at how an idea can progress over time and indeed years, sometimes even decades.
With over 18 sketches on display here, this artwork definitely gives us an idea of how meticulous Vernon could be, if needed to be, in order to get the composition to match what he originally envisioned it. Yet, sometimes the new compositions take on a life their own, away from the original vision, and indeed become a vision all their own.
The last sketch, Sketch 18, features a beautiful half-face, to the right of it looks to be another quick rudimentary sketch, a quick form study, for "Adam Arise". Then, if you notice down below there are sketches of "Talking Trees", as is noted on the sketchpad sheet, this would in essence be the first idea and indeed sketch that would lead up to the creation of his painting titled "Conversations". WOW! Even more impressive, he finished both "Adam Arise" and "Conversations" in 1983, along with "Crossover" and "The Bird Woman"! A master at work, that's all we can say. In fact, looking at the data available in our master spreadsheet, we can see he completed 10 paintings in 1983.
