"Drink Me"

Oil on museum quality ampersand gessobord panel 6" x 6"

Before you say "Jeeze, Adams can't paint a round bottle to save his ass." let me say that this particular vessel has the weirdest shape. Flat on two sides with square diamond nipples, then ridged on the adjacent sides with a slightly curved front. Curiouser and curiouser; could this have been the model for the little bottle Alice found on the table in wonderland?

" ... round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words `DRINK ME' beautifully printed on it in large letters. It was all very well to say `Drink me,' but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. `No, I'll look first,' she said, `and see whether it's marked "poison" or not'; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.

However, this bottle was not marked `poison,' so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off.

Until recently, painting a still life was as unfamiliar to me as being 10" tall was to Alice, and sometimes just as frustrating. I have great respect for my fellow artists who can render inanimate objects with precision. That is not where my heart lies. I am much more comfortable painting organic subjects, be they fish or fowl, man or beast. I thought I would step out of my comfort zone to portray this little medicine bottle, which is on loan to me by some dear friends from Virginia. They brought me a treasure trove of miscellaneous brick-a-brack to inspire me during my recent creative malaise. I think it is safe to say they have the largest collection of cobalt blue glass on the East Coast. This panel may be another "unique" as I found the painting of this somewhat tedious and I am afraid it shows. Hey, at least I was swishing paint.