Traditionally, artists do Still Life paintings to show what they can do with their hands. Still-life paintings like these got Norman Adams a lot of jobs over the decades while other excellent artists came and went with their styles and fashions. These paintings are magic: they are obviously not photographs but they are also too “real” to be paintings. That is their magic. Click on these images to blow them up, some twice. The technical skills it took to paint these images ... Norman Adams has few rivals.

 Painting and drawing has always been an addiction for Norman: to make the next image-painting more appealing, attractive, interesting, than the last: “ I can do better.” It is called Magic Realism. And more than anything else his still-life paintings show us the way this Magic Realism works as he keeps pushing it to new limits to make each image more and more appealing to the eye, or to fool the eye, by making the image appear real, with magic. So much so that the best that the best artists could ever do -- if they had the same addiction to paint -- is to keep up with the creativity and technical skills of Norman Adams. Still Life Prints

Everything, including the threads, is painted.

These are paintings and not wood carvings. And that is not a red leaf but a part of the painting. This Still Life alone has over the years won a few awards ...and lots of jobs.