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ART
Adam Bustamante brings solo show to Lapis Room
The birds and the bees — it’s a phrase used to describe the creation of life to children.
Adam Bustamante decided on the title for his solo show at Lapis Room in Old Town because the phrase can seem simple, yet at times, it’s beyond the mindset.
“Literally, I made a pattern with birds and bees on it,” he explains. “What it turned out to be is that the pattern is the balance to the series. Pattern recognition is one of the most primitive ways of understanding. It’s also a way of not making the same mistake twice. My biggest hope is that I leave people wondering about my art and what they just witnessed.”
Bustamante will have a dozen pieces in “The Birds and The Bees” at Lapis Room. There is an opening reception from 5-8 p.m. Thursday, May 8. The solo show runs 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, Thursday, May 8 through June 22.
Raised in Roswell, Bustamante is based in Albuquerque.
Getting ready for the show, he spent 10 weeks working on the pieces. At times, he would get a moment to reflect on the pieces, but didn’t want to dive in too deep as the ideas were moving through him organically.
“I was painting six days a week,” he says. “When it comes to me working, I do sprints with the work. Every painting takes five days. Typically, I do a painting and wait a week. I didn’t quite know where this collection was going to go. I think some artists, they picture this kind of conversation and try to answer that. I had no idea what this idea was going to be. For me to try and make a painting that lives up to a particular concept, that painting would suffer.”
Art has always been in Bustamante’s life, though he took a detour when he went to the University of New Mexico, where he studied philosophy and history.
It was during the last two semesters when he began painting and learned how art is viewed academically.
For 10 years, he painted in traditional realism and portraits.
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“I moved on because I reached my ceiling on it,” he says. “Being self-taught through realism and that exploration afforded me all the techniques that I used now as a more abstract painter.”
With the 12 pieces in “The Birds and The Bees,” Bustamante incorporated more color and balance.
“I assume that the pieces are easier to approach and more fun to spend time with,” he says. “I made a huge point to make them beautiful within the colors and the composition. I realize that these paintings are brutal in ways. Life is beautiful and brutal. For every smooth, there is a rough situation and it’s part of my reality. I can’t get away from it.”
Over the years, Bustamante has stayed true to his style and has found that people from all walks of life can appreciate it.
His portraiture echoes the style of the greats, but he wants people to ask questions.
As he states in his artist statement, “This world is sad and beautiful. There’s gloom in its beauty, and grace in its sadness. Man sees comfort and pain. Man looks at one and is reminded of the other. Man fixates on what ails and becomes a servant to what soothes. Man forgets how to grow. Man turns to nature to explain what they otherwise cannot.”
