Throughout American artist Adam Straus' nearly 40 year career, he has continued a close examination of mankind's relationship with the natural environment. The role that technological advancements play in society's ever-changing relationship with the environment is one of the main focuses of his investigation. The ways in which we coexist with nature is currently obscured. Our attention span is constantly pulled in different directions; our vision of the outside world is filtered through the screen, our virtual lives sharing little truth with reality. In his most recent works on paper, Straus explores a different method of painting that incorporates text and adhesion of layers of paper. These works integrate current New York Times articles and handwritten shopping lists. In some cases, the continuous words are illegible, their meaning perhaps not as significant as the awareness of their presence. These seemingly photo realistic paintings come loose at their edges, with subtle, and in other places, drastic subversions. Straus' notoriously uncanny ability to confront the viewer, transporting him into the scene, continues in these works on paper.
