Ron Adamson grew up next to the Kootenai River near the small lumber and mining town of Libby, Montana. His interest in art showed up at an early age as he painted the model airplanes and cars that he loved to assemble. In particular, he wanted to save the plastic decals that came with the models and would instead paint the decal images onto the models.
Ron learned to carve the bark of Cottonwood trees as a teenager and would eventually choose to illustrate characters from the local native and frontier culture. He researched the clothing of trappers and settlers, and the traditional costumes of first nations people in order to represent them accurately.
Ron began experimenting with acrylic paint at the end of his teen years. One of his first significant works is shown at left; “The Birches”, 1975.
Ron started working with bronze sculpture in the 1980’s. Each step of the process takes a lot of time. A clay model of the intended statue is only the beginning. A rubber mold is made of the clay and provides a vessel where a wax replica of the clay model can be created. From the wax replica a ceramic mold is made and used to finally cast the bronze. In larger statues there can be many pieces cast separately that must then be cleaned up and welded together. 
Ron created his own foundry in 1990 to learn every step of bringing a bronze statue to life.
“Honkers” was the first bronze cast in Ron’s foundry. It won the Best of Show sculpture award at the 1993 “Celebration of Western Art” show held each year in Puyallup, Washington.
Ron started working with stone in the late 1980’s, primarily alabaster. He produced several pieces awarded Best of Show in juried exhibitions across the Pacific Northwest.
In his most recent adventures Ron has returned to chainsaw carving, and working with much larger pieces of wood and carving tools.
See the individual pages under Sculpture for more examples and information about Ron’s works.
Follow me on Instagram! @adamsonwoodcarver
All artwork and images of artwork on this site are copyrighted and belong to Ron Adamson and may not be reprinted, re-distributed, modified or reproduced elsewhere without written authorization.