Born: Walthamstow 1927 Studied: Harrow School of Art 1940–6; RCA, London 1948–51. Died on 9th March 2005.
Selected commissions: murals at St Anselms, Kennington, London 1971; Stations of the Cross, Our Lady of Lourdes, Milton Keynes 1975.
Selected collections: Tate Gallery, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Birmingham City Museums and Art Gallery; Leeds University Collection; Manchester City Art Gallery; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, Methodist Collection of Modern Art.
Norman Adams is acknowledged to be the foremost practitioner of watercolour of his generation. When he began, in the 1950's, he was influenced by Turner, and also Emil Nolde, but he made something entirely his own of what he absorbed. Studies from nature provided forms to be used in his studio oil paintings until his last decade when he made large watercolour compositions entirely from imagination as his earliest hero, William Blake, had done.