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Michael Lynn Adams (born 1949) is an Oregon-based artist.

Life and Work

Michael Lynn Adams was born in Newark, Ohio, but was raised in Southern California. He is a contemporary realist artist known primarily for his luminous still life paintings. Adams work “has a lumi­nous qual­ity; ema­nat­ing a quiet glow on the gallery wall. Collectors are mes­mer­ized and drawn to each of the works, mov­ing from each jewel-like paint­ing, bask­ing in the reflected light.”

The Representational Art Conference

By 2012 his enthusiasm for traditional studio technique led to collaboration with his friend Michael Pearce to organize The Representational Art Conference, which examined the role of representational art in the 21st Century, seeking to address a "neglect of critical appreciation of representational art well out of proportion to its quality and significance". The conference was planned as a focused but non-doctrinaire event, of serious academic standards. Pearce described the reason for producing the conference: "Until we did TRAC, there were literally no conferences at all about representational art - which is a strange absence, because there was then and is now a huge amount of representational art, and a very large community of people who are interested in representational art. It seemed like a big gap that needed filling." At TRAC2012 Jed Perl and John Nava were keynote speakers, while major figures in the American Representational Art scene gave presentations and demonstrations, including Former USC Dean of Art Ruth Weisberg, artists Tony Pro, David Kassan, Graydon Parrish, Jeremy Lipking, Sadie Valeri, Richard T. Scott, Alexey Steele, Art Historian Vern Swanson and author Virgil Elliot. In Art LTD magazine John Seed described the event as "a 149-year-later 'Salon Des Refuses'".

By 2014 The Representational Art Conference almost tripled in size and included keynote addresses by Roger Scruton and Juliette Aristides. The artist Odd Nerdrum served on a panel with Roger Scruton to discuss the aesthetics of contemporary representational art. In his Huffington Post review John Seed said "...a genuine movement is taking shape".

A third installment of The Representational Art Conference is scheduled for November 1–4, 2015 in Ventura, CA.