Jala is pleased to feature the work of Marisa Adesman. Adesman graduated from RISD with an MFA in painting in 2018. She is currently the resident artist at the Chapman Cultural Center in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Adesman’s large scale paintings combine photo-realistic attention to detail with a more abstract cropping of subject matter.

There is a moment before the mind realizes that Uprooted depicts the slick bottom of a foot wet with paint. In that dissociative moment, the everyday familiarity of the foot dissolves and form is divorced from context. As recognition dawns that the painting is a foot, one then fully sees the foot anew with its fleshiness, shape and intricate patterns.

Through composition, perspective and detail, Adesman’s arresting work prompts renewed appreciation for the everyday miracle of the body.

Marisa Adesman was born and raised on Long Island, New York. She recently graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with her Masters of Fine Arts in Painting. In 2013, she received a Bachelors of Fine Arts degree from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, where she majored in painting and psychology. Marisa graduated magna cum laude from WashU and received the Hazel H. Huntsinger Memorial Prize in Painting. She attended Yale University’s Summer School of Art in Norfolk, Connecticut in 2012 and Columbia University’s Advanced Painting Intensive in 2013, as well as many other residencies across the country. This year, she is the resident artist at the Chapman Cultural Center in Spartanburg, South Carolina.