Salome

A veiled figure emerges from deep shadow in Salome, a 20 x 16 oil painting by Peter Adams, her face wrapped in crimson cloth and lit by an unseen source that turns her skin and drapery a smoldering red against cool indigo darkness. Only her eyes are fully visible, catching the light with quiet, unreadable intensity. Adams draws on his years of formal portrait training under muralist Theodore Lukits here, building the whole composition on dramatic chiaroscuro — a striking departure from his coastal landscapes into something more theatrical and psychologically charged.