The Purity of Imagination and Color: A Self-portrait

The Purity of Imagination and Color is a work from the Artist’s solo exhibition Leslie Adams, Drawn from Life at the Toledo Museum of Art, which coincided with Manet, Portraying Life. This self-portrait, in addition to being her homage to Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, presents a treasured childhood memory. Here we encounter the unexpected juxtaposition of a young girl in an adult universe. The viewer is transported into a kaleidoscopic “Crayola’ colored world of a 1970s American bar. Sneaking olives from her father’s martini, she sits at the bar intently copying provocative Pop art images from cocktail napkins, as though they are Old Master drawings. She pauses and gazes into the mirror. Imagining. At that moment, she reminds us, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on”. -Shakespeare

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